Clear signs are showing from sea to shining sea that the racist era of TV’s Archie Bunker is starting to wane in America. If the general election of 2012 has taught us anything, it’s that this country is a more tolerant place. Even leading into the election, a majority of one party’s electorate had decided to let Mormon Mitt Romney be its candidate for president. The nation’s first black president was running to win his second term. There’s no reason a woman, Hillary Clinton, won’t continue to be that president’s Secretary of State. In fact, more women have been Secretary of State than men in a number of administrations now.

And then Nov. 6 came and reaffirmed the electorate’s wishes to be more tolerant of everyone’s path; which is exactly the same mission as ours here at the Universal Life Church. Three more states, Maine, Maryland and Washington, legalised gay marriage, joining six others. Over in Minnesota, an effort to ban same-sex marriage failed to get voters all that excited, too.

And in many political races, it was clear that religion played no part in the reason people chose a given candidate. Tulsi Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran, was the first Hindu-American to be elected to either legislative branch when she beat out her Republican opponent in Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District this year, not far from where our current president was born. Gabbard’s Democratic predecessor, Mazie Hirono, became in 2006 not just the U.S. House’s first Asian-American, but also its first Buddhist and native-born Japanese. A rich and tolerant melting pot ripe for interfaith ministers in Honolulu. But this is just one of many places where people appear to be loosening up a bit. And more women were elected to Congress this year than ever before.

These developments inspire us here at the Universal Life Church to continue our mission of ordaining interfaith ministers and others who don’t necessarily fit into the exact mold of any of the world’s more “established” organized religions, many of which have only admitted white, straight men until fairly recently in civilized history.