Red, blue voters aren’t as polarized as publicized

JOSEPH N. BELL

About midnight on Nov. 2, when Ohio seemed hopelessly lost and I went

finally to bed, I told myself I would write nothing more about this

election. It was time to move on.

Then the Pilot, as a contribution to community health, published a

Forum commentary by clinical psychologist Steven Hendlin telling

those of us who were experiencing a “post-election emotional letdown”

how to slog our way through it.

Although I felt he minimized some of the consequences of this

election, his suggestions were rational and helpful. One of them was

to make our thoughts and feelings about the election known to others.

OK, so here we go.

Two images continue to haunt me: that God-awful red-and-blue map

of the United States and a comment of David Gergen, who made more

sense to me than any of the other election-night pundits. There was

much talk that night and since about the need and ability of

Americans to once again come together in the aftermath of this

bruising campaign. The consensus was that we surely would, always

had, would again. Then Gergen came on and said exactly what I was

thinking.

I didn’t take notes so I can’t quote him, but the sense of what he

said was that exit polls clearly established that the two paramount

concerns in this election were moral values (as manifested on

election night in widespread opposition to gay marriage) and

terrorism. Dealing with terrorism is an issue on which at least some

consensus can be sought. But not on moral values.

They are deeply embedded, Gergen said, and can’t be changed easily

-- if at all. And so the comforting talk about bridging the chasm

that this campaign deepened is mostly wishful thinking and can’t even

be addressed until it is looked at honestly.

And that took me to the red-and-blue map. In dead center of that

map, clothed in deep red, is the state of Indiana, one of three

states in which Kerry did not win a single county. I grew up in Fort

Wayne, Ind., and although I lived there only briefly after World War

II, I took my family to an Indiana lake every summer for 20 years

after moving to Chicago, and then to Newport Beach.

There has scarcely been a year since that I haven’t gone back to

Indiana to visit and sniff my roots and pay my respects to my parents

and grandparents buried in a Decatur cemetery. The American Midwest

is programmed in me so deeply that it is a permanent resident. So, I

believe firmly, are the values I learned there.

Yet, when it all came down to Ohio on election night, the voters,

while rejecting Kerry, were approving a measure -- along with 10

other states -- to place a ban on gay marriage in their state

constitutions. Several of them, including Ohio, even barred

cohabiting couples from receiving domestic partnership benefits. As

the pastor of an evangelical Christian church near Columbus put it to

a Los Angeles Times reporter, “these people were voting their

values.”

These values took root in the same place as mine, yet they are not

mine. My values regard gay people as God’s children as surely as any

of the rest of us -- and not with an asterisk that says “as long as

we can change them to be exactly like us.”

And my values consider discrimination against gays -- as surely as

discrimination against black people 50 years ago -- totally

un-Christian. So what we have here is not one set of people with

values and the other with none, but rather two sets of people with

values that differ. And the second group must not let the first

identify them as valueless -- which we managed to do in this

election.

It seems to me we have a microcosm of this situation in the rift

between the national Episcopal Church and Newport Beach’s St. James

Church. After I wrote a column on this issue a few weeks ago, a St.

James member called me, and in a long -- and finally acerbic --

conversation said I had it all wrong, that the local church didn’t

withdraw from the basic spiritual precepts of the faith, but rather

the national church did.

The two principal points of disagreement are the appointment of a

homosexual Episcopal bishop in a New England diocese and the divinity

of Jesus. When both groups apply their own sense of moral values to

these two issues, they arrive at different conclusions.

If ever they are to come together, there must be concessions on

both sides. This would mean finding a moral ground where coexistence

can be explored, and the St. James group has made it quite clear that

isn’t possible.

So is coming together possible in the larger society, where gay

marriage is a more important issue than preemptive war and 56% of the

people still think there are weapons of mass destruction to be found

in Iraq? And where the Democratic Party chairman in Florida said

wistfully: “They drove a wedge with social issues and got people

focused on gay marriage and abortion and faith rather than the war in

Iraq and jobs.”

It seems to me possible only if two firmly held convictions can be

moderated.

First, the Democratic conviction that most of the people who voted

for Bush were not very bright citizens who got their news from talk

radio -- if they got it at all -- and are intent on imposing their

fundamentalist religious views on our society. And, second, the

Republican conviction that Kerry’s supporters are all atheists and

left-wing radicals without any firm spiritual or ethical grounding.

Certainly not all Republicans share the evangelicals’ literal

interpretation of the Bible and their ardor to prevent gay marriage

and choice for women and “fix” homosexuals. And just as certainly,

there are many millions of Democrats with strong spiritual leanings

and moral values.

When both are ready to acknowledge that no one has an exclusive

grip on such matters, perhaps the soft edges of these two groups can

at least begin a mending process. That is, of course, providing the

leadership in Washington will allow a climate in which this is

possible.

Meanwhile, as psychologist Hendlin recommended -- and as I have

dealt with crises all my life -- I’ll be holding hopefully to the

thought that this, too, will pass.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.