I'm unhappy with both sorts. Nor am I in the least ambivalent. I'm for research on stem-cells, cloning, production of GM foods, research on nanontechnology, and on and on.

Discussion of the ethics and/or practicality of technologies are fine. Banning them outright because of a 'yuck' factor is silly. (And I'd like to note that it's not only the 'religious right' that doesn't want stem cell research and cloning research.)

Nope. I'm neither religious nor particularly "right" (depending on who you ask and what your issue is), and I'm rather leery of fetal stem cell research, especially casual attitudes toward it, am definitely am not in favor of government funding for a whole lot of fetal stem cell research, and am utterly supportive (i.e. in favor of) GM foods.

So it goes. Like you, I'm just tired of people making dark aspersions lest evil nasty bad icky ol' religion (gasp! horror! oh no!) play some part in someon's concern about this. Especially from people who don't bat an eye when someone opposes, say, capital punishment or legal segregation on religious grounds, but then has grand mal seizures if someone has issues with something like abortion on religious grounds.

It's hard not to conclude that some people's real problem is anti-Christian bigotry when they yap about "separation of church and state." And no, "some of my best friends are Christians" is not sufficient defense. ;-)

The site is either down or at least unreachable from where I am, so I'm commenting blind, but I think I know what you're talking about.

To me, it seems the two anti camps are in many ways mirror images of each other -- to many of the allegedly religious right opponets of stem-cell research, humans and humanity are sacred, and therefore to "mess" with them at such a fundamental level is sacrelige. I realize that this is not the universal objection to such research, however, it does seem to be probably at the top of the list. I don't particuarly agree with this point of view, although I do think it's reasonable, and I admit that I do have to suppress a little bit of a squick reaction when thinking about fetal stem-cell research.

To the more extreme greenies, it's non-human life that's sancrosanct and inviolate. Humanity and humans can go hang -- they're the bad guys, as it were, but don't you dare lay a hand on the Holy Wheat! Naturally, I find this point of view to be surpassingly more perverse than the anti-stem cell position. It's wheat! Humanity has been changing its environments for well over ten thousand years -- and, it's worth pointing out, every species, esecpially every animal species, that exists changes its environment -- it's a fundamental part of being alive.

I share her ambivalence, and her observation of the hypocritical double-standards where matters of faith enter public discourse.

Evironmentism isn't a matter of faith Dean. You may say it is, in the metaphorical sense, because you see them as reliant upon dogma and immune to argument - but its remains a metaphor.

It's hard not to conclude that some people's real problem is anti-Christian bigotry when they yap about "separation of church and state."

Dean, you really should stop making these tendentious sorts of arguments which all go something like this: Group A all say x which is reasonable, a subset of A, Group B, also say y, which is unreasonable, and therefore I'll cast whatever aspersions upon people who say x.

Evironmentism isn't a matter of faith Dean.

Utter nonsense. There are plenty of people in the environmentalist movement, including relatives of mine, who view it as first and foremost a spiritual matter. Furthermore, there are any number of literal Gaia worshippers in the movement. If you're not aware of that, then you need to educate yourself further.

Dean, you really should stop making these tendentious sorts of arguments which all go something like this: Group A all say x which is reasonable, a subset of A, Group B, also say y, which is unreasonable, and therefore I'll cast whatever aspersions upon people who say x.

I have made no such arguments, cast no such aspersions, either in this or in any other thread, and I defy you to show me where I have.

I repeat, however, that a large number of people who bleat about "separation of Church and State" who are mysteriously silent about the involvement of the church in political matters when the church happens to be on their side. So there is precious little bloviating on the political left about the Catholic church opposing Apartheid in South Africa, for example, or objecting about "separation of Church and State" when Christians take a firm stance against capital punishment or in favor of welfare programs for the needy. Yet somehow, mysteriously, let the religious folks take a stance against abortion, then all of a sudden the arguments about "separation of Church and State" come flying out of these same folks' mouths.

I've seen it time and time again, Max, and it's not a generalization at all. If the shoe doesn't fit you, great! If you condemn the Catholic Church for speaking out against Apartheid, in favor of civil rights, and for opposing capital punishment every bit as passionately as you condemn it for opposing abortion, great! Or if you equally defend its rights to do all these things and do NOT use phony-baloney "separation of Church and State" arguments to attack it for taking those positions, good for you again!

But don't pretend that there's something wrong with me for pointing out that people who are transparent hypocrites about these matters abound. Because they do. And I assert, once again, that the real issue is that there is an anti-Christian bigotry deep in the souls of many on the political left, one they haven't the courage or the introspection to look at and root out and reveal for the ugliness that it is.

Think I'm wrong? Okay, tell me how. But let's lose the mischaracterizations of my remarks, m'kay?

If you condemn the Catholic Church for speaking out against Apartheid, in favor of civil rights, and for opposing capital punishment every bit as passionately as you condemn it for opposing abortion, great!

I don't condemn it for any of these things using the separation of church and state argument, since the Catholic church has the right to free speech and the right to lobby government.

Its easy to praise the Church when its actions and beliefs conincide with your own, such as civil rights. When its beliefs are the polar opposite such as in stem-cell research, I see it as a barrier to progress which is very difficult to engage with because their first principles (sanctity of life) and all the usual liberal complaints about religion come into play.

aagh. I'm not explaining it well and I feel I've sandpaper in my eyes at the moment, so permit me to disengage captain. All the best.

Ah, Dean, I must point out something.

Some of us simply believe the state has strictly temporal duties. When the Catholic Church speaks out about such matters as apartheid or segregation, they are talking about measures in which the state is violating the rights of its citizens. The Church is discussing the state's failure to fulfill its primary duty.

Too much of our history shows little concern for the fetus itself. The problem with abortion today is that many came over to the anti-abortion side really as a means of reversing the sexual revolution. Earlier, the laws of the late 1800's were really part of the same movement as the Comstock laws. They were really about sexual immorality. No where else in the law was the fetus treated as a person.

Of course, the Catholics you refer to firmly believe that the fetus is a person. The problem is that so much of this pro-family nonsense, which is pure morality as law, drowns out this question of when personhood begins.

I might remind you that former Sen. Connie Mack, a conservative Republican and a Catholic, supported stem cell research, but was against abortion. We can argue over when personhood begins, a scientific question, not a theological one. The problem comes when people do not understand that distinction.

Do not tell me that some behavior is bad or that the Bible condemns it or some woman claims the Blessed Mother appeared on a Miami bank to condemn it. Tell me whose rights are violated by the behavior and how the state action proposed will resolve it. Separation of Church and state covers more than modern day conservatives will admit. Those who truly believe in Church and state having separate spheres understand that distinction. If it is truly a matter for the state to handle, then one can argue one's position without ever falling back on alleged revelation from on high, whether through sacred texts, infallible documents, or irrational declarations of taste.

One can be concerned about the separation of church and state in these stem cell discussions without being anti-Christian. Being a member of the Church being discussed, I do not need the "my best friends" line. For all you fellow members, was not today's gospel about the Transfiguration? Satisfied?

A bit of slipperiness there, to state that the law never treated the fetus as a person, when in fact laws against abortion go back many centuries, and people have viewed it as murder for millenia. Indeed, almost all of history's great Suffragettes, including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, viewed it as murder and were as passionate in their crusades to ban abortion as they were to get the vote for women. And they were hardly religious crusaders.

Besides, your distinction between morality and other legal matters is entirely artificial and mostly (mostly) a creature of 20th century thinking. Historically there is little such distinction to be found in the law or outside it, and for that matter, such distinctions are not made in most of the world even today.

The phrase "unborn child" was not invented by Catholics or preachy moralists, Libertarian. The phrase is thousands of years old, and found in countless languages. Indeed, to refer to the baby in the womb as anything BUT a baby is also a rather modern and artificial concept.

Mind you, many historical societies viewed abortion as not a big deal. They also tended to be cultures wherein leaving unwanted infants to die of exposure, or strangling them at birth, was also an accepted practice.

The attempt to treat abortion as merely a religious/faith matter is a modern-day shell game, nothing more. Mind you, I'm pro-choice and always have been, but I don't dig people who twist history or the other side's arguments like that. This is a hard, complicated issue, and it's always been a source of ambivalence and confusion, even for many hard-core atheists.

But this is all neither here nor there. My point remains the same: people who bloviate about "separation of church and state" are frequently simply full of it, because they want separation of church and state only when the church disagrees with them. When the church agrees with them, they are either silent or they praise the church. So Desmond Tutu gets to be a hero, Martin Luther King Jr. gets to be a hero, but Gary Bauer does not. Which is fine if that's how you feel about it, but let's not pretend that "separation of church and state" has anything to do with it one way or the other, m'kay?

And by the way: no, not satisfied.

Actually, Dean, you missed my point.

Firstly, my distinction between morality and other matters of the law is not 20th century. Before then one would talk about the distinction between private morality and public morality. This distinction can even be seen in Thomas Aquinas, of much earlier than the 20th century, on the subject of private acts of prostitution. It is not new.

Secondly, no where else, save in abortion, was the fetus treated as a person. The people who pushed such laws did not make such a distinction as I do. There was that so-called Laci and Conner bill recently passed by at least the House. Why was it necessary? If the pre-Roe law of states truly thought the fetus was a person, why would not such killing of said fetus be a crime? The law was inconsistent if they truly believed it! There are some in Congress who realize this, which is why other areas of the law are being changed to reflect this. However, they did pass all sorts of moral laws at the time, and it was consistent with that.

Actually, I never said that Catholics or moralists invented the term "unborn child". I simply use a neutral term to discuss a divisive issue. You read too much into what I read, or did you actually read it, but merely see such a distinction as being against you or your people? Was Ara just proven right?

Actually, I have not even told you what my own view of abortion is. I admire the likes of Nat Hentoff, who is clearly against abortion.

In 13th century Italy, there was the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. The real fight was over the origins and nature of the state, what was the role of the state. Such division really never ended. This why in the 19th and 20th centuries, you could find religious people on the anti-clerical side. The clericalist side had as one of their first principles that man's nature was so weak that it would choose evil over good, thus the state had to protect him from himself. The other side rejected this, supporting the free market place of ideas.

There was both sides of this dispute in this country from the very beginning. Only the nature of religious authority in English Christianity has somewhat masked that dispute in this country.

Your blanket statement on defenders of the separation of church and state is pure nonsense. Remember, it is not what the Church is doing, but what the state is. The Catholic Church cannot violate the 1st Amendment. It is the state action that does so. If Rhode Island were to declare it the favored religion there, it would be the state action that would be the violation. It regulates on the state side.

And the laws against abortions for centuries before the 1800's seem rather lax if they truly believed it was murder. I deliberately kept my own views out of the discussion, so don't assume anything.

Finally the 1st Amendment has everything to do with this. Funny, how you mentioned Bauer. I did not. There are plenty of people who do treat it as a faith matter. I am not twisting anyone's argument. You are. They can treat it as such. Let us not pretend that they are not. The 1st Amendment would have nothing to do with this if we actually discussed the issue of when personhood begins. It is not a question of what a denomination can say, but what the state can do about those concerns. It is the proper role of the state that is in question.

Lastly, I would take it that you are more pro-choice than I am. The fetus sure as hell has a better claim to personhood than Enron. I would argue that at the time that stem cell research is involved, we are not yet discussing a second person. Someone can try to show I am wrong on this, I would be curious about that. One can support this without viewing the fetus at 8 or 9 months as an alleged blob of cells. Just because non-religious crusaders take a position, this does not change the fact that many take that same position on religious crusading grounds.

Dean, there are religious people who do not believe that the state has a role in religious matters or disputes. If you want to give a narrow definition of Christian and then define as anti-Christian those who oppose views associated with that definition, that is your affair. However, it is not honest to refuse to accept that other Christians have a different understanding of the proper role of the state, a different understanding of what religion itself is, and do not get browbeaten by conservative buzz words.

The Libertarian's analysis of this whole issue is splendid, as usual.

As to abortion, I can only reiterate what I've said before here from time to time, i.e., that abortion is a completely different kind of issue than homosexuality or contraception, which involve solely private relations between consenting adults -- precisely because abortion, by definition, means the killing of a non-consenting non-adult. If it's necessary to add a Constitutional amendment (a Right to Life or Human Life Amendment) _extending_ Fourteenth Amendment protections to the unborn, I would support that. Extending rights, _not_ abridging them.

In that way, I think the anti-abortion or pro-life struggle has much in common wth the struggle for racial equality -- and also with the struggle for the rights of homosexual men and women.

With all respect to the King, I submit that the Libertarian, who believes in the Transfiguration of the Christ, has a better understanding of Christianity than a Bright, even as much as that Bright does constantly bend over backward to be fair to Christians. The Libertarian is in the tradition, not of atheists, but of men such as John Milton and Lord Acton, who were deeply religious and _because_ of that, liberals in the old and true meaning of the term.

I'm not a Christian myself, but if I were, I would be insulted by the implication that Gary Bauer represents all Christians and that to oppose him is to attack all Christians.

Dean!: No disrespect was intended when I called you a Bright. I was only using a term you have used to describe yourself, so I thought that's what you prefer. I hope so. No sarcasm was intended nor implication of Godlessness, etc.. I know that you are a highly ethical man with a deep respect for religious people. Agnostic would be another name for it. My father was an agnostic. I did disagree with you on that point and I agree with the Libertarian, but no disrespect whatsoever was intended. You are still the King and Rosemary is the Queen.

Looks like a further erratum is necessary: "on that point", I meant the religio-political point on which the Libertarian was disagreeing with you.

As I've noted many times, I am not a Christian. "My people" are not the issue here.

Libertarian has not many any splendid point because I have not made any blanket statements. Thus most of what he had to say was invalid. I have noted, and continue to note, that many people who talk about "separation of church and state" do so only when they are in disagreement with the church, and stand silent when they are in agreement or even praise the church.

Libertarian has not disputed this at all, and has rather waved his hands a lot to evade addressing that point directly.

I concede that he is correct that debates--debates, not firm distinctions--about what constitutes private vs. public morality have been around for a very long time.

This doesn't change the fact that Libertarian has built a straw man argument, accusing me of saying things I have not, and then conveniently knocking those statements down.

No, Dean, you are the straw man builder. You argued against statements I did not make. You also evaded answers I gave as well.

There is a clear argument that the law, whatever some might profess, did not treat the fetus as a person. The fact that certain laws were never on the books and are needed now is indicative of that. That is clear. I state that no where else in the law was the fetus treated as a person. You could find some statutes on the books before the War of the Rebellion that could, in isolation, look as if the slaves were persons. The laws were designed for a different purpose.

You claimed the distinction was only modern. In any such distinction there is going to be grey areas. Now you are saying "clear distinction"? To deny the fact that the distinction existed before is to deny that there was the two categories, not an insistence on the fact that the distinction's place was not agreed upon.

Again, you appear to pick up on a few phrases you do not like. "Fetus" was the first, and you went on to argue against things I never did. This time, "blanket statements". No need to look at arguments. Or shall I use your methods, and declare most of what you said invalid?

The statements hold. Just because some hold position x due to non-religious crusading reasons, this does not change the fact that others hold the same position for religious crusading ones. Susan B. Anthony does not tell us anything about Gary Bauer's reasons. This merely shows why this was not an answer to what I had said.

I actually answered your one point. You are emphasizing the part of the Church, the wrong part. The real problem only arises when the state does something about an issue. It is not a question of agreeing with the Church, but of whether one agrees that the action on the state's part is legitimate. Upholding this denomination's view or that denomination's view is not a legitimate state interest.

It matters how the state discusses the issues involved. Those who "bloviate", as you would say, in the particular manner you speak of, have a clear distinction between the issue in dispute and the other ones. It is not their view of separation of church and state that is the problem. I do not know what your views are on abortion. I do find it interesting that you are pro-choice, but at least appear not to be supportive of stem cell research. Correct me, if I am wrong, that is how what you said sounds to mean.

The decision of Roe and how it categorized abortion and its relationship with the Constitution and Constitutional rights is actually one of the biggest problems. Abortion was grafted onto the Meyer-Griswold line. It was put into the same category as child rearing, procreation, and other personal, family-related decisions. Remember they stated, "We do not need to decide when life begins"? They pushed that issue aside, and acted as if it was another personal, family-related issue, in this case of who decides if the woman should have to bear another child or not. If this is all that is involved, than it sounds as if the state would become involved in private morality if they interfered in this issue as some would have them. This problem is further worsened by some of those opposed to abortion speaking of the issues in the same light, hence my complaint of the pro-family rhetoric. However, maybe to your surprise, I do not agree with the idea that it is merely another family-related issue, whether or not to bear a child. However, many are arguing from that perspective and view such issues as being matters for churches, not the state. They are not inconsistent, merely wrong, in my, humble or not so humble opinion, as to what issues are invovled in the matter at hand. They do receive more than sufficient encouragement from some opponents who have the same perspective, but place such matters in the realm of state action.

You are emphasizing the wrong part in order to make the other side look the mean side. Do they kick puppies as well?

"Your people". Do you think I really was referring to Christians, Dean? Are you really speaking of the Catholic Church, or do you have some other group in mind that you believe you are defending with all you have? Who could that be?