You've heard the lament by now. Embryonic stem-cell research is the Scientific Thing to do; the religious bio-Luddites standing in its way are so Middle Ages. How can they allow the continued suffering of many with so-far incurable diseases because of a moot religious speculation?

At least that's how some pundits cast the debate, some of them conveniently leaving out key distinctions. But the Devil and God both are in the details.

We see it in the August 24 Pew Research Center survey, which inadvertently reinforces a false dichotomy. Respondents were asked if it's more important to conduct stem-cell research or protect embryos--as if these were mutually exclusive options. Not even a hint that many scientists are already doing both: conducting promising stem-cell research on (adult) stem cells and not destroying embryos in the process.

A review of ten state evaluations of these abstinence-only programs, which teach teens only to "say no," finds no long-term success in delaying sexual initiation or reducing sexual risk-taking behaviors. An independent analysis of recent federal data also shows little reduction in teens’ sexual risk behavior nationwide since the federal abstinence-only initiative began.

Leslee Unruh with the National Abstinence Clearinghouse said that a closer look shows that some of the abstinence programs AFY researched weren't abstinence-until-marriage programs.

"These programs are bogus, fake abstinence programs -- what some people from the left would like to call 'Abstinence Plus,' " Unruh said. "But the funny thing is, there's absolutely no abstinence in these programs."

Separation of powers, of course, is a familiar concept. The basic notion is that the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government should not usurp each other's functions.

In the Schiavo case, the state courts had previously ruled that Michael Schiavo, as Terri's guardian, should withdraw the tube that provided food and fluids to Terri. Because Terri's Law "allows the executive branch" -- in this case, Governor Bush -- "to interfere with the final judicial determination," the state supreme court declared the law "without question an invasion of the authority of the judicial branch" and thus unconstitutional.

Nonsense.

Every time a governor pardons someone convicted of a crime, he "overturns" a judicial determination of guilt, and the judicial imposition of a sentence. So what? The courts gave their opinion, but the governor decided, for whatever reason (perhaps new DNA evidence of innocence), to respectfully differ.

Or suppose a court has awarded custody of a child to someone (for example, in divorce proceedings or through adoption). Does "separation of powers" mean the state child-protection agency -- an executive-branch entity -- may not intervene if it has strong evidence that the custodian is abusing the child?

Advocates of same-sex "marriage" are known to reach for one of the oldest arguments in the liberal arsenal -- that a vote in favor of their point of view is a "smart" vote, and a vote against it is the mark of a knuckle-dragging reactionary.

Well, is it?

The question takes on added prominence as the House of Representatives prepares to vote Thursday on a constitutional amendment protect marriage as the institution of one man and one woman. Congress must pass the amendment before it can be considered by the states, where three-fourths of the nation's state legislatures would have to approve it before it became law.

"I would believe in a God who created this world and also some more rational insights to make it better and would indeed give us an afterlife. An afterlife would be a really good deal. Yeah. I would vote in favor of that," he says. "But in the meantime, I urge one and all to live this life as if there is no reward in the afterlife and do it in a moral way that makes it better for you and for those around you and leaves this world a little better place than when you found it."

That last bit sums up Hefner's moral code.

Don't hurt anyone. Try to do the right thing. Make the world a better place.

He believes he has lived up to those morals, although he's keenly aware of the myriad people -- many of them deeply religious -- who would insist he has done the exact opposite by building an empire based on free sexuality and, some say, the objectification of women.

Their image of him is simple: Hugh Hefner, sinner extraordinaire.

"Sin is a religious term for immoral behavior, but it's a religious term," Hefner says, adding that his definition of sin is "things that are hurtful to people."

Has he sinned?

"Oh, sure. But I haven't pursued very much immoral behavior. I'm a pretty moral guy. Now, it's morality as I perceive it. Morality is what is perceived as good for people," he says, smiling widely, but not in a mischievous way. "I try to do what's right....I define it in a way that is truly, what I believe to be truly humanistic and rational and loving.

In the same vein of questioning about the marriage amendment, we might ask if we really needed to amend our Constitution to prohibit slavery. Unfortunately, we did.

Our society and our institutions are already under daily siege by the liberal elites at the helm of our entertainment industry who get rich producing an endless flow of television and movies that appeal to the very worst instincts of our young people. In a way, the federal marriage amendment would act as a counterbalance to our First Amendment, which essentially guarantees that popular culture will be seized by irresponsible and exploitive entertainment industry power brokers.

We should keep in mind that legalization of gay marriage would be a significant formal gesture of our society to reject a basic tenet of Christianity and Judaism. To reject one basic tenet is to reject the legitimacy of the whole package. The Judeo-Christian tradition would become a "lifestyle" rather than a central cultural pillar of our society.

For Kerry, windsurfing is one measure of his spirituality. In a 1998 interview with American Windsurfer, he said windsurfing is more spiritually fulfilling than playing hockey because windsurfing "allows nature to play with you in ways that nature doesn't involve itself with a hockey game."

In that interview, Kerry provided some of his most detailed public comments about his theological ideals:

"I'm a Catholic and I practice, but at the same time I have an open-mindedness to many other expressions of spirituality that come through different religions....I've spent some time reading and thinking about [religion] and trying to study it, and I've arrived at not so much a sense of the differences, but a sense of the similarities in so many ways; the value-system roots and linkages between the Torah, the Qur'an, and the Bible and the fundamental story that runs through all of this, that...really connects all of us.

"I've always been fascinated by the transcendentalists and the pantheists and others who found these great connections just in nature, in trees, the ponds, the ripples of the wind on the pond, the great feast of nature itself."

Nobody should order reporters and editors to "downplay" a gut-wrenching human interest story involving cruelty, violence and death. Nor should the media flinch from covering casualty counts or honoring the fallen. War involves sacrifice.

But responsible journalists should consider the wisdom of allowing media-savvy terrorists to play them like a violin.

Sensationalism sells; on TV, "if it bleeds, it leads." Audiences are surely drawn to tearful interviews with worried spouses and children. Bloggers get "hits" from posting the most gruesome pictures. Cable ratings rise by milking the pathos in the drama created by the Zarqawi network: first comes the kidnapping report; then televised pleas from the kneeling, doomed innocents; then coverage of marches and vigils to plead for the payment of ransom; finally, in one case out of four, the delivery of dismembered bodies and gleeful claim of blame.

Do we have to become conduits for this grisly, real-death kidnap choreography? We are obliged to report it, but we need not go along with the terrorist propagandists in milking the most horror out of it.

"We don't give people syringes to use drugs. We give them syringes to reduce HIV, STDs and STIs [sexually transmitted infections].

The needle exchange work has its roots in the efforts of Jon Parker, a former injection drug user who nearly 18 years ago began distributing (then exchanging) syringes in the streets of New Haven and Boston. Now more than 125 needle exchange programs, privately and/or publicly funded, exist in the United States. Organizations including the Centers for Disease Control, the National Commission on AIDS and the American Public Health Association support exchange programs. Since heroin addicts will shoot anyway, they argue, it's better they do it with clean syringes.

Saudi Arabia is the kind of country in which an 8th-grade textbook teaches that Jews and Christians were cursed by Allah and turned into apes and pigs, and in which 9th graders learn that on the day of judgment, "a Jew will hide behind a rock or a tree, and the rock or tree will call upon the Muslim: 'O Muslim, O slave of Allah! There is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!' "

It is the kind of country in which a guest worker from India can be arrested for leading Bible studies in his home. Brian Savio O'Connor was beaten and threatened with death unless he agreed to renounce his faith, Christian news services have reported. "My legs were chained and I was hung upside down," he told friends who visited him in prison. "My captors alternately kicked and beat me in the chest and ribs."

And it is the kind of country, let's not forget, in which Muslims, too, can be hideously victimized -- as when the state morality police, the "mutawwa'in," forced a group of teen-age girls to stay inside a burning school building because they were not wearing the head scarves and black cloaks that female Saudis must wear in public. Fifteen of the girls died; 52 were injured.

Saudi oil fuels the world, but the enemy we are fighting is fueled by the feverish religious bigotry that is Saudi Arabia's other leading export. Unless we squarely face that bigotry, and cast a cold eye on the regime that sustains it, the war on terror is one we will not win.

Saeb Erekat is something of a rarity in the Palestinian Authority (PA): by his own account, he has "never had a gun in his hand" and has never been to jail. While he may not personally perpetrate violence, his polished prose advances its cause--deviously.

Whereas most spokesmen cleverly contort the truth without fracturing it, Erakat lies like he breathes. At a one-hour session with nine American journalists, Arafat's mouthpiece wasted no time in doing what he does best.

Asked upfront whether Arafat's machine, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, recognizes the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, he emphatically states that it does. Except it doesn't.

Never mind that this year the Supreme Court overturned the one major lower-court opinion that had struck down the pledge and that there is no reason to think the court is having second thoughts. As far as House proponents are concerned, judges should never again even be able to consider whether the words "under God" are constitutional in the pledge.

How much power Congress has to block judicial consideration of the constitutionality of its laws remains, somewhat surprisingly, an open question -- because Congress wisely has chosen not to test the question. It has, rather, accepted judicial review -- the idea that the courts can strike down legislative enactments that offend the Constitution -- as integral to the system of checks and balances. So while legislators have sometimes been tempted to yank controversial matters from the court's jurisdiction, cooler heads have prevailed. They should prevail now too. Whether the pledge violates the First Amendment's separation of church from state is a legal question. Congress has no business obstructing the courts from answering it.

Christina Aguilera is a role model for young girls, just the wrong kind of role model. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt if she's changing her public ways -- but her outward appearance leaves nothing to be desired, figuratively of course, with immodest clothing and all. I'm scared about this documentary -- but the subject needs to get out there to the MTV audience. Hopefully it's a good one!

What makes being known as a "good Jew" such a liability while the designation of "good Christian" so facilely gains one entry to credibility and trust? After all, to denigrate Jewish values is to deny Jesus' most profound teachings -- The Golden Rule, The Lord's Prayer, The Beatitudes. Whenever I see a "What Would Jesus Do?" bracelet, I say to myself, "Jesus would act like a good Jew." Period....

Jews believe that good Jews go to heaven -- maybe a different heaven -- and that heaven is an inclusive, not an exclusive, place. We believe that God is friendly and has lots of room for good people. Good Christians are welcome there, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, maybe even some good atheists. We will let God figure that out. Define "good"? It probably has something to do with The Golden Rule. At least that is what Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Jesus taught.

If I earn my way into Jewish heaven, I am totally psyched on the idea of spending eternity learning at the feet of Mother Teresa, Dr. King, Baha'u'llah, the Dali Lama, Moses Maimonides and oodles of people who are condemned to hell by "good Christians." On the other hand, I get a little queasy every time I contemplate spending eternity in the company of televangelists, Bible-thumpers and politicos who promise that I will be with them if only I see things their way.

Whenever I hear a candidate being marketed as a "good Christian," my blood does not boil. It runs a little cold. Then I stop and wonder whether folks who are simply "good people" could ever pass the us-versus-them loyalty test that would gain them entry into civic leadership, if not heaven.

Pro-pledge demonstrators who gathered outside the Supreme Court carrying signs declaring "Keep USA 1 Nation Under God" clearly did not regard "under God" as a historical footnote. Their emotion and energy -- and the seriousness with which they are taken in Congress -- are the best refutation of the idea that this controversy was not about religion.

It was about religion -- but it was also about patriotism and what the First Amendment scholar Rodney A. Smolla calls the Aristotelian strain in American thinking about the law: the notion that "law exists to make men good, by binding men together in a cohesive and just community."

There is another theme in the American political tradition. It was celebrated in Justice Robert Jackson's opinion in the 1943 Supreme Court decision upholding the right of children not to pledge allegiance to the flag. "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation," Jackson wrote, "it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."

Those who would strip the federal courts of the right to defend that freedom should have the courage of their convictions and admit that they prize orthodoxy -- religious orthodoxy and political orthodoxy -- above the individualism celebrated by Justice Jackson.

We need to acknowledge that everyone, liberal, conservative, libertarian, or whatever else, draws moral distinctions, including ones that look like exceptions from general rules. Liberals may distinguish some race discrimination against whites, which they call affirmative action, from race discrimination against nonwhites. I think this is the wrong distinction, but it's not "moral relativism": Moral rules are sometimes more complex than simple three-word phrases such as "race discrimination bad."

Conservatives, for instance, generally believe that killing humans is wrong -- except when done in self-defense, or when executing a just death penalty, or in war, or in some other situations. There's nothing "morally relativist" about that. It's just an acknowledgment that moral questions are complex, and require distinctions within the category of killing. In fact, some of the people who would have the most absolutist anti-killing rule are generally on the left: pacifists who oppose all capital punishment, all war, and even all individual self-defense. This failure to recognize moral exceptions to moral rules makes the pacifists wrong, not right.

Likewise, liberals aren't inherently wrongheaded moral relativists simply because they distinguish some race discrimination from other race discrimination, or some lies under oath (e.g., about sex) from other lies. I may disagree with them about the particular moral rules they apply. But there's nothing inherently mistaken about their underlying moral method, which is what the charge of "moral relativism" suggests.

What do the Presbyterian Church and the Syrian Baathist dictatorship have in common? They have both pledged themselves to cutting off ties with American firms doing business with Israel....

Recently, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted to divest from American companies that do business with Israel. The action, taken at the church's 216th General Assembly meeting in Richmond, is the first of its kind taken by an American denomination. Indeed, even colleges and universities, where anti-Israel campaigning is rampant, have rejected calls for divestment. As with Syria, Caterpillar is a particular object of Presbyterian ire.

To the Left, legality matters most, while to the Right, legality matters far less than morality. To the Right and to the religious, the law, when it is doing its job, is only a vehicle to morality, never a moral end in itself. Even the Left has to acknowledge this. When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Ala., bus in 1955, she violated the law. Therefore, anyone who thinks she did the right thing is acknowledging that law must be subservient to morality. Why, then, must the overthrowing of Saddam Hussein be subject to international law as determined by Communist China, neo-KGB Russia, amoral France and the thugs who rule Syria?

The answer is to be found in the Left's substitution of legal for moral.

And why is the Left so enamored of law?

First, the Left, which is largely secular, regards morality not as absolute, but as relative. This inevitably leads to moral confusion, and no one likes to be morally confused. So instead of moral absolutes, the Left holds legal absolutes. "Legal" for the Left is what "moral" is for the Right. The religious have a belief in God-based moral law, and the Left believes in man-made law as the moral law.

This is what Boykin said about one Somali warlord who believed Allah would protect him from being captured by Americans: "I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."

Muslims reacted with outrage from that one statement. Boykin's response?

"Let's go back to the day that we captured Osman Atto [the Somali warlord]. He was a corrupt, evil warlord who was stealing from and robbing his own people. He's a man who worshipped graft, corruption, power and money," says Boykin. "My reference to his God being an idol was not to Allah. My reference was to his worship of corruption, of power, of money. He was a thug. He was not a good Muslim."

That may have been what Boykin meant by his statement, but the words "my God was bigger than his" are what everybody heard, and they went off like a bombshell, just when the United States was trying to convince the Muslim world that the war against Islamic terrorists had nothing to do with religion.

Was he trying to make it seem like his God was against theirs?

"No, that's not what I meant at all. Look, I'm a Christian. I make no apologies for that," says Boykin. "But I'm also not foolish enough to deliberately offend or in any way ostracize any religion....I'm not anti-Islam, I'm not anti-Allah."

In a country where Christianity flourished after the arrival of the first Protestant missionaries in 1885, Kim Il Sung's policy of Juche, or self-reliance, introduced an elaborate religious mythology around a Juche Holy Trinity that placed the Great Leader at the pinnacle. His mother, Kim Jung Sook, and his son, the current leader Kim Jong Il (aka Dear Leader), form the other members of the holy family worshipped by North Koreans -- the majority of whom have never heard of Jesus. Following the introduction of the Juche policy, all religions were banned in a country where until 1950, according to some estimates, there were 2,850 churches, 700 pastors and 300,000 Christians.

The North Korean Foreign Minister's office contains a mural showing the modest log cabin where the current ruler in the communist dynasty, Kim Jong Il, is said to have been born. Another mural on the landing outside has the same scene in winter, depicting the cabin surrounded by a high mountain and fir trees in the simple colours of painting by numbers. According to the legend, a star appeared over the mountain at the moment of Kim Jong Il's birth. All that is missing is the three kings and their camels.

In fact, Kim Jong Il was born in a prison camp near the far eastern Russian city of Khabarovsk.

But no matter. For the North Korean people, indoctrinated and blind to the outside world in their hermetically-sealed universe, have been brought up to believe that their impoverished state is a Communist paradise. Any imperfections are blamed on the "hostile" Americans, with whom the country is still technically at war.

Sometime in the last decade or so, Norma McCorvey realized that she had been an unfortunate pawn in the battle over abortion rights and switched sides in the debate, recently describing herself "one hundred percent pro-life." Convinced that the decision that bore her pseudonym was a travesty of law, she filed a motion last year to re-open the original decision, declaring at the time: "I deeply regret the damage my original case caused women. I want the Supreme Court to examine the evidence and have a spirit of justice for women and children." McCorvey and her lawyers submitted in support of her motion the sworn testimony of more than one thousand women who had had abortions and claimed to have suffered long-term emotional damages and damaged interpersonal relationships as a result of their "choice." McCorvey's new suit, filed 30 years after the original decision, never had much of a chance, since it sought to reestablish criminal laws that had long since been removed from Texas's books. It is not surprising then that the court of appeals held that the case should be dismissed.

What was surprising, though, was Judge Edith Jones' powerful five-page separate opinion. While Judge Jones agreed that the court had no power to reopen the original Roe decision, her opinion assures that McCorvey's arguments did not fall entirely on deaf ears.

For the Catholic believer, the Catholic Church is the propagator of the tools for intimacy with God, and thus for salvation via the sacraments and Church teachings. And when it comes to those teachings, and those who violate them, the reasons a bishop should deny Senator Kerry Holy Eucharist are numerous -- and, as with the Sunday obligation, have everything to do with advancing intimate communion with God.

The Church teaches that some actions are so wrong, and that their heinous nature is so evident, that any Catholic committing such acts has willfully chosen to remove himself from communion with Christ and has done great harm to his soul. Abortion, the murder of the most innocent, is one of those actions. Kerry, in directly forwarding abortion legislation, has aided and abetted this kind of murder. The Church deduces that such a person is clearly out of communion, a thing that is so serious that the Church requires the sinner (in this case, Kerry) to take arduous steps to reinstate himself in a relationship with God, via the Church and her sacraments, the m.o. of salvation. These steps exist, in part, to make such grave choices, well, grave. Also, because abetting abortion is so grievous a separation, Holy Communion is off limits until the sinner takes these required steps.

When people argue for Kerry's bishop to deny him Communion, it's not ill will at work. They want him to bring Kerry back into communion with the Church: to help him rejoin the flock, for his own good -- but also to stop him from confusing the rest of us into thinking that promotion of abortion and communion with God are reconcilable differences.

George W. Bush is among the most openly religious presidents in U.S. history. A daily Bible reader, he often talks about how Jesus changed his heart. He has spoken, publicly and privately, of hearing God's call to run for the presidency and of praying for God's help since he came into office.

But despite the centrality of Bush's faith to his presidency, he has revealed only the barest outline of his beliefs, leaving others to sift through the clues and make assumptions about where he stands.

Bush has said many times that he is a Christian, believes in the power of prayer and considers himself a "lowly sinner." But White House aides said they do not know whether the president believes that: the Bible is without error; the theory of evolution is true; homosexuality is a sinful choice; only Christians will go to heaven; support for Israel is a biblical imperative; or the war in Iraq is part of God's plan.

On any given morning, 99.9% of Iraq's 25 million people may wake up eager to rebuild their country and secure the blessings of liberty for themselves, their families and their neighbors.

But if, on that same morning, the remaining 0.01% of Iraqis, 25,000 people, wake up intent on spreading death and destruction -- through sabotage, hostage-taking, video-taped decapitations, suicide-bombings and drive-by shootings -- guess what will dominate that day's news?

This is less a gripe about the media than it is a testament to the efficacy of the strategy being implemented by our enemies. They are utilizing terrorism not just as warfare but also as public relations and advertising....

The terrorists have learned that the major media are generally too "neutral" to disapprove of them. Even when they slaughter women and children, most journalists will refer to them, respectfully, as "insurgents," "militants," sometimes even "activists." After an attack, no matter how vicious, commentators will note that "the security situation continues to deteriorate," a development for which Americans must bear responsibility.

The U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq without the approval of the U.N. Security Council was "illegal," Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the BBC on Wednesday.

"I hope we do not see another Iraq-type operation for a long time -- without U.N. approval and much broader support from the international community," he said in an interview with the BBC World Service.

The U.N. Charter allows nations to take military action with Security Council approval as an explicit enforcement action, such as during the Korean War and the 1991 Gulf War.

But in 2003, in the build-up to the Iraq war, the United States dropped an attempt to get a Security Council resolution approving the invasion when it became apparent it would not pass.

Washington is shaping up as one of the first battlegrounds in this war because of our constitution. It hasn't always been interpreted this way by the courts, but in the late 1800s, the state's founding fathers went considerably farther than America's founders did a century previous. Our heritage of safeguarded equality under the law is something to be proud of and something to keep in mind when we elect our state Supreme Court justices.

Gay marriage should be such a simple question under the law. Any consenting adults should have the right to get married. Period. The law is separate from any religious connotations the ceremony might carry. For our legal system, the only questions should be whether the individuals are competent and of age, and whether they're not already married. Legal marriage long ago left the realm of the divine and became, instead, contract law. Religious doctrine should have nothing to do with it. Alas, we still live in an era where some religious followers would like to impose their beliefs on all of us. That's very much what the opposition to gay marriage adds up to.

If there's "a catastrophic event -- multiple parishes affected -- we would likely postpone the election in certain areas that are most directly affected," said Scott Madere, spokesman for Secretary of State W. Fox McKeithen....

The Louisiana amendment would effectively block Louisiana judges from legalizing marriage for homosexuals, as Massachusetts judges did in that state last November. It also would outlaw other kinds of marriage-like unions for same-sex couples.

For the president, paying close attention to his religious base doesn't just make sense -- it is imperative. Opinion polling shows that Americans' votes most closely track their religious attendance. Voters who say they go to church every week vote Republican, by overwhelming margins. Those who go to church less frequently vote Democratic, by nearly similar proportions. Beginning with exit polls conducted during the 2000 election, the synchronicity has held across nearly all denominations and even faiths, appearing among Jews and Muslims, as well as Christians....

For Kerry, the Democratic Party's longstanding support for abortion rights, which he has endorsed, is condemned by Catholic doctrine. His candidacy has become a test case for a Catholic Church task force developing guidelines for how U.S. bishops should approach Catholic lawmakers who promote policies opposed by the church.

While rejecting U.S. and EU criticism of its anti-terrorism reforms, Russia plans to adopt Israel's counter-insurgency methods in Moscow's war against Chechen rebels.

Russian officials said the government in Moscow has agreed to increase security cooperation with Israel and focus on counter-insurgency. The officials said the cooperation would include Israeli training and instruction on a range of issues, including aviation security and civil defense....

[Foreign minister Sergei] Lavrov met Israeli leaders last week and signed an accord meant to pave the way for a joint effort against Islamic insurgency groups.

The Chechen separatist movement has been hijacked by Islamic extremists. (If you have chaos long enough, the international terrorists will come, and replicate.) No longer are the Chechens fighting for independence. They are fighting for the destruction of Russia.

This makes the Chechen movement far more dangerous than a rebellion. It makes it the front line of the war on terror....

And indeed, the situation Russia faces is not unlike that which confronted Benjamin Netanyahu when he became prime minister of Israel. From its inception, Israel has been confronted by nations and terrorist organizations dedicated to wiping it off the map. Netanyahu's response was straightforward: He cracked down. Hard.

For this he was widely criticized. But under Netanyahu's stewardship, suicide bombings nearly stopped, and Israel managed treaties with neighboring Egypt and Jordan. This tenuous peace came about not because Arab societies suddenly recognized the inalienable value of basic human rights, but because Netanyahu had made clear that Israel would not be dislodged.

If the conservatives are right and we've become a society of whining victims -- fighting for a spot on "Oprah" and blaming others for our troubles -- then let's stop rebuking homosexuals for the sad state of conjugal bliss and pass some laws that really make a difference.

How about a constitutional amendment to deny marriage to any couple that did not take a mandatory, government-sponsored prenuptial class? Or denying divorce to any couple that did not submit to a minimum of six months of twice-weekly marriage counseling sessions? Sterilization for any heterosexual man who abandons his children? A tax deduction for joining Promise Keepers?

I understand the moral outrage of those who invoke the biblical injunctions against homosexuality, but if we're not going to observe its equally no-nonsense penalties for adultery (i.e., stoning to death), maybe the fairest thing to do would be to leave the homosexuals to themselves while we put our own houses in order. I can't imagine they'd botch the job any more than some of us have.

Bush has deceived me, and millions of Catholics and conservative Christians and Evangelicals, by his abortion policy at home and his Iraq policy abroad. But, let us put aside Iraq for another day. Let us look at Bush’s record on abortion.

Bush campaigned on a strong pro-life program. However, his policy has been completely the opposite.

> During President Bush's term in office 5.2 million babies have been aborted.

> During President Bush's term in office 4,100 children have been killed in their mothers' wombs EVERY DAY.

Yes, President Bush has cut off some abortion funding there and there -- meaning, in United Nations programs abroad. But, he has done nothing -- the rare partial birth abortion ban, notwithstanding -- to stop abortions at home....

I fully expected President Bush, a few moments after he was sworn to the Presidency, to stop abortion in America by Executive Order. Just as he had ordered the immediate stop of hundreds of other Clinton-era programs at that very moment.

Not only does such personal experience seem persuasive to many, but there is evidence of something very much like this in the Bible itself. Often overlooked in the debate about homosexuality is, arguably, the central issue in the early church and in much of the New Testament. That is, the inclusion of the Gentiles. The early follows of Jesus were, like Jesus himself, Jews. As these early followers fanned out into the Gentile world, the church faced a challenge. Could non-Jews, Gentiles, be part of the emerging church? Could you be a Christian without the mark of the covenant, namely, circumcision?

Scripture argued clearly and decisively, from Genesis on, the importance of the rites and rituals of Judaism, including circumcision. Yet in the New Testament, particular the Book of Acts, the story of the early church, experience supersedes the Bible, in the Bible itself! At the famed Jerusalem Council of the early church, Paul and others report, "these Gentiles have received the Holy Spirit." God, reports an astonished Peter, is doing a new thing....

I have a friend who organizes matters and questions before him in three piles. There is "Accept," and there is "Reject." But there is a third possible category. He calls it "Awaiting Further Light." It seems to me that people of faith, who by definition know that God is God and they are not God and that they therefore lack the full, complete and absolute Truth, might more regularly employ the "Awaiting Further Light" category. We might, then, come to the contemporary debates on this issue, as well as others, with a greater capacity to listen, to listen to views not our own. If there is one quality that might characterize faith and religious people in our day, my own vote is for a greater measure of humility.

Unlike the shouting matches that too often characterize such encounters, "The Question of God" invites skeptics and believers to a table where intelligence is the appetizer, honest discussion the main course and dessert a choice of whether to believe or not. Those fed