Whatever Happened to the Resonable Man?

I find myself personally dealing with liberals on a daily basis these days. The rough part is that I'm dealing with them in my own church. For those of you that don't know, I'm a member of the famed Episcopal Church, USA. This of course is the church who in 2003 decided to ordain Gene Robinson as the first openly homosexual Bishop. This is something that is affecting even the most remote Episcopal churches across this nation at a very deep level.

Ever since the "Robinson Decision" four almost four years ago I find the same problems that have plagued our nation since the Clinton administration have now found their way into a place that so many like myself have gone to escape such polorizing issues to gain personal peace. Instead of issues like immigration and how to deal with terrorists we find ourselves having heated debates over issues like Biblical interpretation and whether or not the fundamental articles of faith are true.

As for myself I fall just to the right of center (if you could somehow put the politics of the church on something as limiting as a linear scale). I'm not a literalist in terms of Biblical interpretation, but I do beleive that their are absolute truths given to us by God by way of the Bible. And I do beleive that there are things that are absolutely right and absolutely wrong and are clearly stated as such in the Bible. And this used to be a value that was respected by my fellow Episcopalians on both sides. But now it has developed into a situation similar to Ireland where you can easly have an someone in a threatening manner walk up to you and ask "Protestant or Catholic!?" If you don't identify yourself as either an ultra conservative AAC member ready for "African Oversight" or as an ultra liberal willing to say to hell with all those elitist backward thinking conservatives you're automatically worse than all of them.

My question that I offer to my readers, Episcopalian and non-Episcopalian alike, is how did we get here? What made us such a binary culture where you must be either ultra conservative or ultra liberal on every topic? Whatever happened to the reasonable man?

Now don't misunderstand me because a reasonable man can never give up his core values. But can a reasonable man respect another individual while maintaining his own personal core values? Can a reasonable man stand up for himself and those he cares about in support of their core values and their rights?