In a way...

...this might have been an election we really didn't want to win. Not, anyway, when you consider the moral cost of victory.

Steve Soto posts an intriguing campaign post-mortem. I don't subscribe to every point he makes, but one certainly rings true.

...the religious right and the Cult controls this country. By cleverly placing gay marriage bans on the ballots in several key swing states, Rove was able to ensure that the values issues would overcome pocketbook or war concerns and drive up the vote amongst the right wing base at a time when a majority indicated concerns about Iraq, the economy, and the direction of the country were paramount to them.

It seems pretty clear that gay bashing initiatives made Oregon and Michigan much closer than they should have been, and in Ohio a particularly radical ballot proposition (it not only bans same-sex marriage, but state benefits for couples in heterosexual civil unions) seems to have been the decisive factor in the election of George Bush.

While Democrats fussed about whether Kerry should have spent more time focusing on the war or the economy, it turned out that it really didn't matter. He got the anti-war vote, and he got the economic responsiblity vote. But it wasn't fear of an ever-increasing body count or climbing deficits that made the difference. It was the fear of legal protection for people in love.

Frankly, since I'm an advocate of unrestricted rights for any and every adult couple, regardless of orientation, John Kerry was already as far away from my position as I could tolerate. I could accept his 'civil unions but not marriage' stance as a nod to political reality, but that couldn't calm the fears of the fundies, and I couldn't have supported a position that would have. If supporting legal rights for loving couples, even in the modest fashion that John Kerry advocated, cost us this election, well, it's a price worth paying.

We need to do the work that will neutralize the fear driven fundie haters in the electorate, no doubt. A lot of folks thought the youth vote might be the key this year, but it wasn't any more than it's been in years past. I'm not sure what the answer is, beyond the norman kind of voter education, identification and motivation that's already being done. I do think it's time for progressive people of faith to focus more energy on calling our fundie brethren to account for their distortion of the meaning of our faith. Haters will go to Hell. And we should be giving them hell.