While a liberal may have won the presidency – take comfort social conservatives, discrimination is alive and well.

The more I reflect on that every single gay marriage ban passed – especially California's Proposition 8, the election of Barack Obama has somewhat tarnished for me.

Frankly, this morning, I am quite disappointed and angry.

Quite angry.

Undeniably, social conservatism is grounded in Christianity, with the Holy Bible, the most strident in its laws proclaiming death sentences for homosexuality. The Bible is the unquestionable authority for the bigot, the social conservative, to wrap himself up in tribal laws of bronze-age people disguised today as the love of Jesus.

Ironically, exit polls in California demonstrate that it was African-Americans who voted in higher numbers to ban gay marriage. African-Americans are proportionally self-identified higher as Christian than other racial groups, with maybe the exception of Hispanics. How quickly are the lessons of Loving vs Virgina have been forgotten?

I thought we lived in a secular society? I guess not.

Proposition 8 was mainly bankrolled by the Mormon Church and other right wing religious groups.

The wall between church and state continues to crumble, taking democracy, liberty and equality for its citizens with it.

That's what these gay marriage bans betray.

So good job. You have successfully enacted laws – state constitutional amendments no less, to remove a citizen's rights.

And you have established right-wing Christianity, over other forms of Christianity who embrace homosexuality.

So congratulations social conservatives and its enablers - you're bringing us closer and closer to theocracy.

Regardless, who you voted for in this election, if you voted to discriminate against gays and lesbians, you are a bigot.

A shameful, fearful, bigot.

Although we are just about on the tail-end of this story about some of the nastiness at McCain rallies, some thoughts come to mind watching this video.

Let's leave aside for a moment the issue about the length of time that these people interviewed have known of either Obama or Palin, what I find breathtaking is the first part of the video.

The supporters who believe Obama is a "terrorist" or a "one-man-terrorist cell" reminds me of the appalling polling numbers which show that Americans - mostly the right-wing, who believed that Iraq had a hand in the 911 attack. Patently false of course. Yet, there remains a number of people (around 18% if I recall correctly) that continue to believe this nonsense.

A person's beliefs are not born in a vacuum. They exist because they have been convinced. We needn't look any further then in our own community for the seeds which sows these contemptuous beliefs. To paraphrase Sam Harris, a belief is like a lever. In this case of James David Adkisson, that lever was pulled, ending disastrously.

While McCain may not personally exist in the same world as his campaign, agitating right-wing pundits, or those who actively spread fear because of Barack's name (as this video attests), there appears that there are many that live in an entirely different world than many reasonable conservative or pro-McCain supporters do. (By the way, my name, Matthew, is as every bit as Semitic in its origin as Barack is.)

It's sad that xenophobia, sexism and racism - as well as homophobia, continue to be as seductive as they are in our society.

Policies and party aside, whatever the outcome of the election - as a society we still have much work to do.

Decide.

Which world do you want to live in?

Right-wing centrist hate is just too much to stomach sometimes. We simply can not criticize President Bush when we are in a time of war – a long war against terrorism that will never end. Do you people not understand that it is our blind and uncritical love of George Bush that keeps our women and daughters safe from Muslim enslavement?

As many in the right wing have stated over and over again, that any and all criticism of the President weakens him. It is our patriotic duty to look the other way when our President fails – even when he fails to deliver on his own legacy.

Bill O'Reilly on that Bush legacy:

"He’s done. He’s through. … He will now go down in history…as an ineffectual leader. And I’ll tell you the reason why, it’s poor leadership on his part. The people that he picked to run certain things have been disastrous. And no leadership and now Americans are getting hurt" (The Radio Factor: 09.18.2008)

If you believed that Bill was correct when he stated about Air America Radio that "..all those clowns at the liberal radio network, we could incarcerate them immediately. Will you have that done, please? Send over the FBI and just put them in chains, because they, you know, they're undermining everything and they don't care." (The Radio Factor: 06.20.2005)

Therefore, as only true patriotic Americans, we must hold Bill accountable and all people like him, now that the baseline has been shifted beyond themselves.

Anti-Americanism can not stand. 

Action must be taken.

I was at the American Le Mans Generac 500 at Road America with some good friends over the weekend. We set up to watch the race by the Gearbox, which afforded us a good view of a couple of turns and close enough to food, bevies, bathrooms and plenty of people watching.

As I impatiently waited in line and finally hurried into the restroom trailer when my turn was up, I noticed that directly above the urinal, some astute right-winger carefully penned "liberalism is a mental disorder" with a Sharpie. You could see the meticulous effort spent by the writer in making sure that anyone reading could legibly understand what he had written.

Afterwards, I began to wonder what could motivate a person to leave graffiti above a urinal and just who is really sick in the head? Your garden-variety liberal, or the Urinal Cake Pundit? This guy thought that this statement was so clever that he needed to hover over a urinal at eye level – where countless men go to relieve themselves, and inform the world who he thinks who are mentally unstable. Um... yep, that sure is the action of a sane person no less.

Anyway, this vandalism of our sagacious Urinal Cake Pundit is an accurate analogy for what I read, or hear, that passes as an excuse for the unfathomably respected politics of today's right-wing. Instead of just merely vandalizing private property, the right-wing vandalizes people.

And we know the rants.

Hateful screeds that impugns other Americans as un-patriotic, or worse yet, as terrorists for the high sin of having political differences. The backwards logic that skews liberalism as destructive to the United States where liberalism has historically companioned rights for minorities, women, lifted children out of slave labor shifting the baseline against right-wing, traditional society. These red herrings, over-flowing from the potty-mouths of the right-wing are designed to remove focus on the merits of a possible solution, dribbling vehemence toward other people - drop for drop, instead of reasoned debate.

And we know the players.

One long micturative chain reaction from Coulter to Malkin to McBride, which in turn breeds the Hemmers – all the more shrill with every iteration in the movement of bog roll journalism. No, it is not tangible solutions they offer, but stark contempt from a jaundiced worldview. They are more like an annoying restroom attendant, whose politics can be defined as the wipe and smear from the morally vacant who have nothing left to offer in the debate of what a compassionate society should be.

Long ago the lever of ideological authoritarianism was pushed, abandoning principled conservatism for the witch-hunt frenzy we see today.