At the risk of being really obvious, some big things happened on Election Day. It's no hype to say that Americans made history by electing our first black president. You didn't have to support Barack Obama to rejoice that we've made that breakthrough. Maybe the best measure of progress is how many people who didn't support Obama wish they could have — but felt they couldn't, due to his positions on some crucial issues, like abortion.

That's not the only big thing that happened on Election Day, though. One of the biggest is that California voters overruled some judges who'd taken it upon themselves to reinvent marriage. And what makes the story fascinating is that it was Obama backers who provided the deciding votes.

What happened — and what's still happening — is worth a closer look, because it involves a lot more than just politics.

What happened first, most everyone knows. Five people got the notion that the California Constitution requires the state to recognize same-sex "marriage." These five people happened to be among the nine judges who'd been picked by politicians for the state Supreme Court, so their notion was held to be The Law. Soon came the "marriages," some involving high-profile celebrities, along with a lot of other logical consequences. Words like bride and groom disappeared from marriage licenses, replaced with Party A and Party B.

What happened next, not so many people know, especially outside California. To make a long story short: Lots of people worked very hard, very fast, gathering signatures to give voters a chance to overturn the Court's decree. Lots of money was spent, especially by gay-marriage backers, who had much more to spend. Lots of ads were run, lots of calls were made, lots of polls were taken.

The language of the measure was clear enough: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." Not everybody who spoke about it was so clear. That included Barack Obama. He told gay activists he opposed Prop 8 as "divisive and discriminatory." But he told Rick Warren on national TV that marriage is "a union between a man and a woman." ("For me as a Christian, it is a sacred union," he added. "God's in the mix.") He never did reconcile his positions, and both sides cited different quotes from him to make their respective cases.

Black voters, however, were crystal clear about their position. Turning out in large numbers to support Obama, they also backed Prop 8 with nearly 70 percent of their vote. In a close race (52 to 48 percent), that was pivotal. "Really, Hispanic and black voters in California passed Proposition 8," said Andrew Pugno of ProtectMarriage.com. "Inner-city black neighborhoods voted stronger for Prop 8 than the Republican suburbs."

So if we're all celebrating the empowerment of black voters, you might think we'd all celebrate the expression of those voters' values, right? Surprise: That's not exactly what's happening.

Various media outlets (TV, print, Web) treated the vote with a mixture of shock and dismay. How could blacks not have rallied behind the cause of gays, their fellow victims of oppression? Soon enough, the voters were being charged with ugly motives. "The communities of color demonstrated an awfully bigoted vote," said Princeton professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell on The Rachel Maddow Show. The charge was widely echoed against Prop 8 supporters of all races. (Just Google "Proposition 8" and "bigotry" to count how widely: I get some 90,000 replies.)

By now this accusation against opponents of homosexual marriage has become pretty commonplace. That doesn't mean we should get used to it.

If you think about it, you can't help being struck by the accusation's absurdity. After all, virtually no society in human history has conceived of same-sex marriage, not even the most sexually libertine. Were they all driven by mere bigotry? Can all opposition to homosexuality be dismissed so easily? Are modern types who insist on a "right" to gay marriage morally superior to pretty much everybody who's ever lived?

I'd like to think that Americans still know better. I'm heartened to see that African Americans sure do. The reasons they seem to know it better than most may be a matter of sheer experience. More than most, they know that race and "sexual orientation" are two very different things. More than most, they know that the breakdown of marriage and family brings the most destructive consequences. And more than most, they know what God's Word has to say on the subject — because they have outspoken pastors who don't shrink from language like sin and God's will.

This last point is the most important. If our culture ever decides that upholding the standard of marriage is bigotry, then our culture must also hold that Christianity is bigotry. That's why the issue of same-sex marriage is about even more than marriage, as hugely important as that is. It's about the legitimacy of Christianity itself.

Of course, no culture can ever undo the truth of God's Word. But Christians who won't defend it forfeit their claim to be called Christians. Some of us would much rather talk about other, safer subjects, the kind that won't get us called nasty names. I'm afraid we don't have that option. This subject won't go away. We're obliged to take a stand, and keep taking it as long as we have to.

Some voices may call that bigotry. We just need to know that the real word for it is: faithfulness.