Recently a professional organisation to which I belong held a community meeting at their international conference and took a vote.They had been discussing where to hold their next major conference.The people living in North Carolina, where there was a training institute for this group, had been holding regional conferences for several years, and they felt ready to be able to shoulder the organising responsibilities for hosting the larger, international conference that takes place every two years.Since there were no other people offering an alternative, it looked like a done deal.Then, someone observed that North Carolina had just passed an amendment barring same-sex marriage.Voices rose. Outrage and moral disgust were expressed.How could an organisation that stood for inclusion and social justice wink in the face of such discrimination?Indeed, hadn’t some among the founding tier of practitioners who created the approach to psychotherapy that the organisation was based upon been gay and lesbian?How could the organisation reward the state of North Carolina by bringing the revenue generated by the conference to that state?So, the organisers from North Carolina withdrew their proposal, and the organisation went on anyway to vote not to go there as an ethical statement.That left nowhere as a place to go for the next conference until someone suggested that they go to Asilomar in California.It is a beautiful place right along the coast just above Monterey.It would make for a reflective conference, because it is out in the country. There would be no distracting city lights, sights, and sounds.People could go for walks on the trails through sand dunes. They could be “in nature”. It might even be serene.Everyone jumped on that bandwagon, and people volunteered to investigate the place with a view to holding the next conference there. It was as if the organisation uttered a sigh of relief.Never mind that California voted in November of 2008, with its infamous public initiative called “proposition eight”, to putting an amendment to the state constitution identifying “marriage” as being between one man and one woman.According to Wikipedia:Proposition 8 (ballot title: Eliminates Rights of Same-Sex Couples to Marry. Initiative Constitutional Amendment; called California Marriage Protection Act by proponents) was a ballot proposition and constitutional amendment passed in the November 2008 state elections.The measure added a new provision, Section 7.5 of the Declaration of Rights, to the California Constitution, which provides that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognised in California”.On May 8 this year the North Carolina Same-Sex Marriage Amendment appeared on the state ballot as a legislatively-referred, constitutional amendment, and it was approved.That amendment defines marriage, in the state constitution, as between one man and one woman, and it bans any other type of domestic or civil union.The difference between it and California’s amendment is that California allows civil unions.Still, the push for gay rights is not to settle for civil unions. Gay and lesbian people want to be able to marry one another.Marriage carries with it many states' rights and social connotations that civil unions lack.People who have grown up with the institution of marriage want to be able to enter into such a pact with those they love, and they say that sexual preference should not matter.Aside from the whole matter of civil rights, social freedom, etc, I have to say that it seems to me the organisation was hypocritical in voting against North Carolina while expressing favour for California.It is not a morally significant position, given the current argument, to say that California allows civil unions.The wording on the definition of marriage in both states is virtually identical, and they both disallow same-sex marriage.So, being a Christian, and having lived with the criticism that Christians are just a bunch of hypocrites, I have to smile a bit here.It would seem that hypocrisy is an equal opportunity defect. Perhaps everyone has the disability.The word hypocrisy comes from the Greek hypokrisis, meaning “play-acting”, “acting out”, “coward” or “dissembling”.The word hypocrite is from the Greek word hypocrites. Whereas hypokrisis applied to any sort of public performance, hypokrites was a technical term for a stage actor and was not considered an appropriate role for a public figure.In Athens in the fourth century BC, the orator Demosthenes ridiculed his rival Aeschines, who had been a successful actor before entering politics, as a hypokrites whose skill at impersonating characters on stage made him an untrustworthy politician.Literally, the hypocrites often wore masks to play several characters at the same time, just switching out one mask for another to change character.That is where we get our colloquial term “two-faced”. A hypocrite is two-faced.The dig on Christians is that they make one way on Sunday, but live another way the rest of the week.Christians are supposedly two-faced. They give lip service to something they do not actually practice, and therefore could not actually believe.It is possible that any given Christian could believe but just lack ability, so that they simply could not live up to the standard of their beliefs.That would not make them a true hypocrite. A true hypocrite either lacks the ability to see his or her own duplicity or intentionally deceives other people about who they are.The apostle Paul described Christians as forgiven sinners, but sinners nonetheless, and he acknowledged that he himself struggled because the thing he affirmed he did not practice and the thing he abhorred he did; he wondered what could possibly save him from such a weakness, and he concluded that only the grace of God in Christ could do that.Well, this all leaves me wondering what is up with the organisation to which I belong.Are they intentionally two-faced, simply lacking in the insight that would show them that going to California after voting against North Carolina is inconsistent, were they overcome with emotion and unable to do any better than what they did (even though they may have wanted to), or are they doing this on purpose just to act as if they have a moral compass and make for appearances?I guess it’s an object lesson.