Religious Does Not Mean Conservative

Barack Obama's announcement that he supports gay marriage, while of course being a political gamble (conservatives have referred to the announcement as a "gift" for Romney), was made with a genius stroke of tact through his appeal to religious voters when he said:

The thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it's also the Golden Rule, you know — treat others the way you would want to be treated.

Now, I am personally disgusted how religion has wormed its way into everyday national politics, and there seem to be daily violations of the First Amendment's establishment clause, including gay marriage bans such as the one recently approved by voters in North Carolina. Policy should not be faith-based since theocracy is inherently limiting to a diverse population, both for those of varied faiths and those within a given faith.

However, I think Obama made the right call when he cited his faith in support of gay marriage because he demonstrated that being a Christian doesn't mean one has to be right wing. Fundamentalist and extreme religious views have been receiving a lot of attention lately thanks to the emergence of the Tea Party, the bizarre candidacy of Rick Santorum and his equally offensive predecessors, the rolling back of women's rights in states, and so on. It has been disheartening to witness the extent the silence of more tempered religious views in the face of outrageous biblical (and in my view unlawful) claims and policy. Yet now, finally, Obama supports gay marriage for reasons that include the bible.

The result? Instead of alienating Christians by pitting a secular, humanist political view against an evangelical Christian one, the debate present within the Christan community concerning biblical interpretation gains momentum. A valuable moderate Christian counterargument to exaggerated homophobic claims is now in the spotlight.

Christianity is not inherently equal to homophobia, sexism, or all the other repressive ideologies espoused by most prominent public Christian figures. Those Christians who don't accept such a repressive, rigid understanding of the bible should be relieved to finally see a political alternative to what we've been witnessing for the duration of the 2012 campaign. And I'll bet there are more moderate Christians than extremists out there. Extreme views, by definition, lay on the extremities.

The next step, I hope, is the slow but definite release of the law from religion's choking grasp.