As you all know, tomorrow is election day. Its passing will bring a feeling of relief to many Iowans, and who can blame them? The political dynamic in Iowa is turbulent. Things are changing in this state; freedoms denied are being returned to the citizen. I’m not sure why this would upset anyone living in the “land of the free,” but some feathers have been ruffled.

There has been an effort to convince people to “Vote No” when they flip their ballot over and consider whether the Iowa Supreme Court judges should be kept in their positions.

Allow me to clue those who have had their heads buried in a book and their shoulders to the grindstone, without time to look up to take in the political landscape around them.

Christian fundamentalists aren’t happy that LGBT people can legally get married in Iowa. Despite the many verses in the Bible about love and acceptance, it is somehow unacceptable that any non-traditional couples be married.

Many of the people who disagree with LGBT marriage are Republicans who avidly speak about how the government needs to be held financially accountable, and has grown too large. They still advocate the removal of the judges despite that a vote to dismiss them is backlash from the removal of government power that dictated same-sex couples could not marry.

I dare to beg the question: How can someone be for a smaller government, freedom or the Constitution and still vote not to retain judges who had the courage to stand up for a minority of people who had been stripped of civil rights?

It’s a sobering thought, that there are wolves that circle in the darkness around liberty’s torch. There are those that would strip their brothers and sisters of their ability to live the way they want — if we let them.

There are people that walk around campus that couldn’t care less if fellow citizens had civil rights stripped away if they think it’s what their God would want. It would be foolish of me to say, “That’s what it’s become, religion morphed from something that is intensely private to something that is to be forced on others in the public forum of society through laws.”

The “That’s what it’s become,” is the foolish part. How many centuries have to go by before people can start saying, “That’s the way it has always been”?

Can you think of a time when religion was something that wasn’t a hot-button issue, not something to be talked about at dinner — unless it is to agree with the majority at the table?

Here religion is again, being used as a winch to convince people that they should vote out judges that had the courage to restore liberty where it had previously been denied.

If you believe that individuals in the LGBT community have the same rights as any other citizen in this country, if you believe in liberty, if you believe that people have the right to be left alone when they aren’t infringing on anyone else, then you need to vote “yes” to retain the judges.

Tell your friends and family to vote “yes” to retain the judges as well. We need an overwhelming decision to keep the judges in order to send a message that Iowans won’t tolerate intolerance.