As Ethics Scoreboard gallantly and futilely attempts to undo the harm done to the public's ethical perception by the relentless misrepresentations of the 2004 campaign, we come to one of the most bizarre distortions…and this one, sorry to say, has to be laid at the doorstep of the Democrats.

Somehow, an entire political party and most of the media (which, according to surveys done by the reliable people at Pew, just happen to be made up disproportionately by journalists in sympathy with that party) seem to be laboring under the inexplicable belief that personal values and beliefs that are supported by one's religion should not be used to guide action, opinion, judgement, or policy. It is difficult to imagine a less valid contention, but this is the subtext of many of John Kerry's statements and much of the invective of his supporters.

Kerry's defining embrace of this concept was his statement, much derided on the Scoreboard, that he, Senator John Kerry, tireless advocate for partial birth abortion as well as abortion on demand for any reason whatsoever, nonetheless believed that "human life begins at conception" and thus "abortion is wrong." But, the Senator took pains to explain, those beliefs come from his religion, and thus advocating such beliefs would amount to imposing his religion on others. And the media bought it! Very few papers or TV news sources even felt the statement was newsworthy, apparently because it makes perfect sense to them. And it makes no sense at all.

A refresher of Ethics 101: Concepts of right and wrong come from an understanding of ethical values. Since most of us don't have the time or the wisdom to acquire on our own all the ethical concepts that have been tested over the centuries, we look to trusted sources for help. They include our families, communities, schools, culture, government, professions, peer groups, and yes, churches. For most of us, our personal ethical values are not perfectly matched to any one of these, but are an amalgam of all of them. Fortunately, ethical values are not usually controversial: the various people, groups and institutions that influence us will be in agreement 90% of the time, if not more.

When a group with some perceived authority announces a particular ethical structure, it is called morality. Religions have moral codes, but so do professions (the Rules of Professional Conduct for lawyers is just one example), organizations (the Boy Scouts of America is defining a moral code when it requires that scouts be "Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent") and nations (The Declaration of Independence lays out the nation's hierarchy of values.) Families often have a moral code that they pass on through generations. The values that have real staying power are those that are reinforced by multiple moral codes, but simply including a value in a system of morality doesn't convey ownership of that value. Is opposing lying as a practice a religious value? It's in the Ten Commandments; but it's also in Gene Autry's "Cowboy Code" [Note for younger readers: Gene Autry was the original "singing cowboy," a movie star, and the original recording artist for, among other hits, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.], the lawyer's codes, and many other places. It would be ridiculous to assert that, for example, opposing lying by public officials is an attempt to promote Judaism, even if, in fact, the individual mounting the opposition to official dishonesty were Jewish. Virtually every moral code condemns dishonesty.

The fact is that moral codes inevitably do form our individual ethical values, but those values have validity independent from their sources. Thus, when any of us believe something is wrong based on those values, it is incumbent upon us as good citizens and human beings to do what we can to mitigate, cure, or end that wrong. Is this "imposing our religious values on others"? Of course not. Is it imposing our values? Sure. That's how society and civilization avoids sliding ever backward into slime, degradation, exploitation and callousness…by people saying, "Stop! This is wrong, and here's why." And if they have a valid reason, and they hold their ground and are persuasive and courageous, sometimes the wrong behavior does stop.

I know there are too many among us who take the view that everyone's values are their own and equally legitimate, and nobody should interfere or criticize. Let Janet Jackson strip during the Superbowl. Let presidents turn the Oval Office in the "people's house" into their own personal pick-up lounge on the taxpayer's dime. Let fifth grade teachers seduce their students. But the fact is that the moral and immoral, ethical and unethical acts of millions of American ultimately influence and define the cultural environment where you and I live. We each have an obligation to lend our voices to the never-ending debate over what's right and what's wrong.

The moral values taught by the churches shouldn't have less weight than the values endorsed by your father, the bar association or Gene Autry; if anything, they should have more. Values are their business, after all. I don't recall Reverend William Sloan Coffin's Viet Nam War protests being condemned as an effort to promote the values of a religion, though his philosophy was certainly based in Christian teachings. The Reverend Martin Luther King was trying to end segregation and hate, not convert Alabama to the Baptist Church. Religion bolsters ethical values, but our promotion of those values has nothing to do with promoting religion.

Those who, like some of the more vicious of Mr. Kerry's disappointed supporters, raise the specter of a "theocracy" because the President and many Americans have built their value systems with strong support from religious morality are trying to take religion out of the values formation process. That is a very questionable goal. We need strongly held ethical values from wherever we can obtain them, and the motives of individuals who would remove one of the richest sources of ethical teaching must be viewed with suspicion and alarm. What really seems to bother those who attack Americans whose ethical values have a strong religious origin is that they are so forthright and assertive in standing for their beliefs.

Full disclosure: I have not been to church service voluntarily in thirty years. But efforts by the media to portray the apparently strong preference of church-going voters for President Bush as some kind of an ominous coup by the "religious right" betrays a lack of understanding of the qualities Americans seek in a leader. They rejected the chance to vote for a candidate who professed that he would not act in harmony with his most deeply felt beliefs, because that would be "imposing religious values." It was a credo that implicitly rejected values, ethics, religion, logic and courage of conviction. The fact that the mainstream media either didn't recognize it as such or didn't care is frightening. The possibility that many Americans did is grounds for hope.

» The three parts of this series are:

• Part 1: The Meaning of "Lie"
• Part 2: "Imposing Religious Values"
• Part 3: "Counting Every Vote"