Barack Obama shows James Dobson and all of us there are other sides of religion

Battling theology with James Dobson might seem a daunting task. Dobson has a lot of power in the Evangelical world. And Evangelicals are very good at sounding like they are right, even when they are not.

So strong kudos to Barack Obama for standing up for Christianity and up to Dobson.

There are a lot of people who feel like they are Christian, believe in the values Jesus taught, but who feel shut out due to the volume of the Evangelicals. And those people haven't had a voice on the national stage.

Democratic candidates have run away from religion in the past, especially since the "Moral Majority" crept into the spotlight. And they have lost votes as a result from voters who otherwise would vote for a Democrat.

It doesn't mean Democrats should do with religion what Republicans do with religion. All it means is explaining another viewpoint of religion.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of religions throughout the planet we call Earth. Within Christianity, there are countless variations and interpretations, even within religions themselves. So the idea that Christianity only has one voice is ridiculous.

I'm not saying Obama is doing this to get votes, he seems to really believe this. But Democrats should learn from Obama that this strategy will get people who previously blew off Democrats and give them a second chance.

As for the Dobson-Obama battle, the intriguing revelation was that Dobson and Tom Minnery, senior vice president for government and public policy at Focus on the Family, said that the Old Testament texts and dietary codes no longer apply to Jesus' teachings in the New Testament. Obama had cited verses in Leviticus on the legitimacy of slavery and eating shellfish being an abomination.

Progressives tend to refer to verses for Leviticus, since Leviticus is commonly quoted by Evangelicals to justify their treatment of gay and lesbians. The best-known pop culture retort was from President Jed Bartlett, who led us through a number of Leviticus and other Old Testament verses to show the awkwardness of only focusing on homosexuality.

Evangelicals like to tell us that they literally interpret the Bible. But a literal interpretation is still an interpretation. The interpretation ignores countless language translations and nuances to words from many centuries past. I do not profess to be a religious scholar, but I do believe those people who are smarter than me who do know.

So the "good news," to borrow a phrase, is that we no longer have to listen to Leviticus as a reason to mistreat gay or bisexual men. The element forgotten by Evangelicals is that no Biblical verse has ever applied to lesbians. This isn't true for noble reasons, but simply because no seed (semen) is involved.

Unfortuantely, Dobson or Minnery didn't focus on Obama's other point on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, which Obama calls "a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application."

Evangelicals, who feel like everything in the Bible is true, tend to ignore or downplay teachings from Jesus because those verses are too liberal for them. Their desire is to quote more from the teachings of St. Paul in the New Testament or focus on harder verses from the Gospels.

Obama has an understanding that religion and yes, the Bible, is more complex than just leaving it in the hands of Evangelicals or anyone else. And the results will show in November.

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