Most pro-life people believe that life begins at conception or fertilization; that is the foundation for being pro-life. Therefore, we believe that even embryonic life is something to be cherished and protected even though, as Ron Reagan noted, these lives have no arms or legs or discernible signs of what we recognize as humanity....

Our ethics on life cannot be offhandedly modified simply because an arm of science demands it or because the left calls us names. Once we begin to adapt our ethics because of political heat there is literally no telling where we could arrive in terms of completely manipulating innocent life.

The debate has now been settled: John Kerry definitely served in Vietnam.

That was a major point of the Democratic Convention and of Kerry's acceptance speech. This must be one of the great acts of chutzpah of all time: The party that made national politics safe for Vietnam draft avoiders in 1992 now considers Vietnam service arguably the foremost qualification for the presidency. But, hey, the Democrats are now the party of militaristic display and cultural conservatism.

The emphasis here on values, faith, and patriotism was shrewd politics. But there was also something defensive and pleading about it, as if to say: "We can have values too. Isn't that amazing? And we can even be religious, and incredibly enough, patriotic." The last is a response to a phantom: the nonexistent Republican effort to "question the patriotism" of Democrats.

The group already has a policy opposing discrimination against gays, and many members are concerned about political actions to stop gay marriages, she says.

Keeping gays from marrying "puts a particular stress on them just because of their sexual orientation. It's a health issue and a mental health issue," [APA president] Halpern says.

The greatest hope that John Kerry offered last night was not so much anything he said in policy. It was in spirit. He held out the possibility of a less arrogant America. "I don't wear my own faith on my sleeve," Kerry said. "But faith has given me values and hope to live by, from Vietnam to this day, from Sunday to Sunday. I don't want to claim that God is on our side.As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God's side."

That drew one of the loudest applauses of his acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination for president. He deserved it. It was about time the Democrats started fighting faith with faith.

In accepting the nomination of his party Thursday night, John Kerry could not quite bring himself to give both the president and the volunteer military who performed so well some credit for this great and significant advance for human liberty. The theme of liberty in the Muslim world belongs to George Bush. It was he who named liberty the only real alternative to terrorism.

"With a firm reliance on Divine Providence," to cite our forebears once again, Bush has publicly held that one cannot fight terrorism merely by killing terrorists. One must provide an alternative of liberty, prosperity, and opportunity -- one must labor to build free societies where they do not now exist. Liberty works. I think Bush will win because these are the truths Americans hold.

What people really mean when they say so-and-so is imposing his religious beliefs on me is that they don't happen to agree with those beliefs....

There is, however, a problem with the way some religious conservatives approach the political sphere. The problem is not dogmatism, but laziness. Someone who rests the argument for a certain position entirely on the fact that his religion told him to is not really attempting to persuade. Even if one is motivated by faith, one still has to convince others using secular, or at least broad-gauge, moral arguments. It is fine for someone to oppose gay marriage because Leviticus frowns on homosexuality. It's neither appropriate nor smart to say Leviticus calls homosexuality an abomination and so you should too. That is demanding that other people accept your religion. Some religious conservatives forget to persuade because they live in a political cloister, speaking mostly with others who agree with them, and for whom Leviticus is an effective shorthand. One of the reasons the Founding Fathers thought religion important to a functioning democracy is that it would tamp down passions and ensure that people would listen to each other. Religious conservatives need to understand that part of the Founding Fathers' wisdom, too.

Analysts have said that religious Americans are typically drawn to the GOP's agenda on social issues. In general, Republicans oppose gay marriage and abortion, positions many faiths also profess. On the other hand, Democrats are associated with pro-choice, pro-gay causes as well as interpreting the separation of church and state as keeping prayer out of public schools and religious iconography off of government property.

Religious Democrats at Wednesday's event said they can succeed from within the Democratic Party because, aside from moral issues hotly debated in the United States, Democrats care more than Republicans about issues of social justice.

Teaching safe sex should be a high priority to curb AIDS, Savicz said, noting that promoting abstinence is likely to get a cynical reaction from teenagers: "Yeah, yeah, like I'm going to do that."

A majority in the poll, 55 percent, said teaching safe sex should be the focus of efforts to prevent AIDS, rather than promoting abstinence, backed by 40 percent.

Melissa Pardue, an analyst with The Heritage Foundation, took issue with the poll.

"It spent a significant amount of time talking about the HIV crisis in this country and all the people that are contracting it from not using contraception, and then goes on to ask parents if they want their kids taught that," she said. "Of course any parent's going to say, 'Well, no, I want my child to use contraception.'"

Kelly sits nervously on a couch in a clinic in Washington.

She is doing one of the most controversial things a woman can do in the United States -- seeking an abortion.

She is grateful that the law allows her to choose when she can have a baby.

"I'm glad abortion's legal and available," she said.

"Especially if we don't have contraception that's 100% effective.

"I'm glad there's an alternative because some people aren't ready to be mothers."

But more than 30 years after the US Supreme Court made abortion legal, womens' groups are warning this right could be taken away if President Bush is re-elected.

A friend of mine who is a DIA anti-terrorism specialist just told me that Boston would not be attacked and New york probably would be. I asked him why and here is what he said.

Ron Reagan's speech Tuesday night at the Democratic convention was breathtakingly irresponsible. For example, despite the fact that no one knows whether embryonic stem cells will ever be effective in curing Parkinson's disease or any other grave affliction, Ron Reagan virtually promised Parkinson's sufferers that embryonic stem cells will provide a cure for them in ten years or so. "Sound like magic?," he said. Welcome to the future of medicine." But Ron Reagan has no idea -- no one does -- whether this is the future of medicine. He is engaged in a campaign of outrageous hype to persuade suffering people that a mere change of administrations in Washington will lead to cures for "a wide range of debilitating illnesses: Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, lymphoma, spinal cord injuries, and much more." Sound like snake oil? Welcome to the present of politics.

Killing embryos is not a problem, he said, because those embryos have no fingers or toes. So much for quadriplegics. It's not a problem because they feel no pain -- like the comatose, or people given lethal injections. It's not a problem because the future will approve. In which case, so much the worse for the future.

I think that America has been involved in an unjust war on the unborn for over thirty years.

I think that liberals are right when they say that a nation's greatness is measured by how it treats those who cannot fend for themselves.

I think that I am lucky to have parents who are pro-life.

I think that many people who are "pro choice" are glad that they were born before 1973. Otherwise, they might not be able to make choices.

I think about the night that my wife spent six hours with a woman who was having her second miscarriage....She may have been thinking about how she had been misled by Planned Parenthood and the Women's Resource Center....

I think that pro-life groups should make their own t-shirts saying "your mother didn't."

The Richmond-based court ruled that the town of Great Falls, S.C., violated the Constitution by allowing officials to invoke the name of Jesus Christ. The suit was filed by Darla Kaye Wynne, a Wiccan who asked that "a generic deity such as 'God' " be invoked, "so that all of my community could be welcomed there," the three-judge panel noted in its decision Friday.

The controversy arose in Fredericksburg last year when Kent Willis, executive director of the ACLU in Virginia, complained on behalf of a city resident. He said yesterday that the 4th Circuit decision means that "Rev. Turner must deliver nonsectarian prayers in which he doesn't make reference to a specific religion."