From The Seattle Times
By Gregory Turner

As an early supporter of Barack Obama, I rejoiced over his victory and the promise it brings for a less-violent and more-just world.

Buried in the election results, however, comes the news from four states that efforts to recognize the loving aspirations of 5 percent of our neighbors have been dealt a stunning blow of oppression. While we might not be surprised that Arkansas, Florida and Arizona would seek to deny the right of legal marriage to committed people of the same gender, the vote in California to overturn its Supreme Court’s legalization of marriage equality was disheartening, to say the least.

Demoralizing might be a better word, because voters in these states made a conscious decision to hurt others. Theirs was a deliberate decision to inflict pain on good people. So “demoralizing” is the correct word: “to corrupt or undermine in morals or moral principle; to pervert or deprave,” says my old Webster’s.

The morality now violated rests on the oldest of spiritual guidelines: that we do or do not do to others what we wish they would do or not do to us. What saddens me is that when asked, these voters are likely to cite religious reasons for this political act of fear.

We in the church have a long history of moral intolerance toward those who differ from us, which makes it imperative we recall the cardinal distinction in Jesus’ teaching between true morality and its moralistic perversion. While one can cite the fears of gospel writers and invoke their words literally (one may think) to support an act of discrimination, one cannot live in the spirit of Jesus and then act to put down the legitimate hopes of loving and committed couples.

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