Election 2012 and the beginning of the rise of secular values.

While the take away from this year's election is that the mix of power in Washington didn't change much, there is a little noticed but significant change that took place.  Some pople have noticed, but it has mostly been disguised as "getting rid of the crazy", since so many of the right wing idiots got their comeuppance through getting tossed out of office.

I speak of the rise of secular values.

Just look at these statistics:

1: Same-sex marriage won in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington. In Minnesota, a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage was overturned; in Maine and Maryland and Washington, same-sex marriage has been flat-out approved. This is the first time in United States history that same-sex marriage has been approved by popular vote: in the past, same-sex marriage has always won either through the legislature or the courts. 

2: The first openly gay United States Senator, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, has been elected. 

3: Marijuana was legalized in Colorado and Washington. And medical marijuana was legalized in Massachusetts. 

4: Open misogyny, rape apology, and hatred of female sexuality got trounced, as Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin, Richard “Rape Is Something That God Intended To Happen” Mourdock, Allen “We Are Not Going To Have Our Men Become Subservient” West, and Joe “Abortion Is Never Necessary to Save the Mother’s Life” Walsh… all got beat. 

5: Taxpayer support for churches lost in Florida. And it lost by a big-ass margin. 

6: The Republican strategy of trying to win elections by demonizing birth control, i.e. people who have sex for pleasure, went down in flames.

Greta said it well:

But there’s one conclusion that jumped out at me like a kangaroo last night:

In this election, secular values won big-time.

Don't get me wrong, as she noted, lots of Conservative Republicans still got elected.  The balance of power remains divided.

But the big news, divested of its cover, is still that secular values were preferred over religious values, the American people chose rather decisively that they preferred a man for President with a familiar, moderate religiosity and that they prefer that religious values stay out of our laws.

I can live with the moderate religiosity if we can keep religion out of the government.