We remain optimistic that this year's divisive and unnecessary fight over granting same-sex couples the freedom to marry will inevitably be won in the courts and in the hearts of Americans....[W]ith measures banning same-sex marriage on the ballot in 11 states next Tuesday, those who favor giving gay partners the right to marry need to brace themselves for some painful setbacks....These sweeping bursts of bigotry could be read as outlawing family health insurance and other basic benefits for unmarried heterosexual couples as well as for gay couples....The most promising chance to defeat one of these mean-spirited measures is in Oregon....It's possible that people in these states may search their consciences in the voting booths and rebel at enshrining discrimination in their state constitutions.

I may have knee-jerk reactions to what seem like lame excuses for taking a human life, but I cannot deny the sincerity of this Planned Parenthood employee. I never imagined I'd leave an abortion clinic feeling good, but I did in a sad and hopeful sort of way. My heart was filled with pain over the children whose lives end in that place and their mothers who'll grieve silently forever, yet a prayer of thanks stirred in me because a bridge of humanity was built across the great divide of pro-life and pro-choice.

Abortion is the tragic ending of a precious life, but when I think of people who choose or perform this death act, rather than feeling hate or condescension, I get a lump of love in my throat, with a longing to hug them, and pray, "Father forgive them, they don't know what they're doing." Technically, some of them know exactly what they're doing and may even flaunt it as their right. But remember those who cheered and jeered during the Lord's crucifixion. They were the very ones Jesus asked his Father to forgive.

On the day that Yasser Arafat left for urgent medical treatment in France, the press in the Palestinian territories and the wider Arab world hails his commitment to the Palestinian cause and prays for his speedy recovery.

One paper warns Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that without Mr Arafat he would be hard-pushed to find another partner for peace. But there is also criticism from a Lebanese paper of Mr Arafat's slowness to implement reforms.

Beheadings, suicide bombings, mass executions, and improvised explosive devices are not intended to destroy or even defeat the U.S. military. Rather, they are aimed at the taxpaying citizens back home who fuel it. In a globalized world of instant communications, a bin Laden or Zarqawi trusts that most of us would prefer to take out the garbage than watch a blood-curdling video clip of yet another Western hostage kneeling before a half-dozen psychopaths as they begin to saw off his vertebrae. They hope that we the sickened ask, "Why waste our billions and hundreds of lives on such primordial folk?" -- wrongly equating 26 million who wish freedom with a few thousand criminals and terrorists.

The improvised explosive device is a metaphor for our time. The killers cannot even make the artillery shells or the timers that detonate the bombs, but like parasites they use Western or Western-designed weaponry to harvest Westerners. They cannot blow up enough Abrams tanks or even Humvees to alter the battlefield landscape. But what they can accomplish is to maim or kill a few hundred Westerners in hopes that our own media will magnify the trauma and savagery of their attack -- and do so often enough to make 300 million of us become exhausted with the entire "mess." The message of Arabic television is that the Iraqis are supposed to blame us, not their brethren who are killing them, for the carnage. Not our power, but our will, is the target.

President Bush talks regularly about creating a "culture of life" in America and has a record to show he's not afraid to act, having signed into law more pro-life legislation than any other president since the passage of Roe v. Wade. About this conviction, he should not fret. Recent polls reveal that 61 percent of Americans favor strict limitations on the abortion license (36 percent thinking abortion should be permitted only in cases of rape, incest or to safeguard the life of the mother, with 25 percent favoring a complete ban). On the other hand, only 22 percent of Americans believe -- with Sen. John Kerry -- that the status quo should be maintained, that is, that abortion should be permitted at any time during the pregnancy, for any reason.

Despite what the mainstream media would have voters believe about abortion (disingenuously discussing Roe v. Wade as if it allowed only first-trimester abortions), Mr. Kerry is not in good company. Mr. Kerry has been a stalwart advocate of abortion rights during his tenure in the Senate, numbering himself among only a small minority of senators who voted against the widely popular ban on partial-birth abortion. Despite Mr. Kerry's attempt to have it both ways ("I believe life begins at conception but support a women's right to choose"), his ardently pro-abortion voting record reveals that Mr. Kerry views abortion as an untrammeled good -- one that ought to be funded by federal taxpayer dollars -- and a necessary, perhaps the necessary, precondition to women's well-being and equality.

After landing in Amman, Arafat was carried by doctors on a wheelchair to a waiting French presidential jet.

"God willing, I will come back," Arafat, who was laid on a stretcher inside the jet, told aides shortly before the plane departed for Paris.

Putting the issues succinctly into today's realities, it looks like this: If you are a "liberal," you favor abortion and you support homosexual marriage. You want to see prayer banned from public gatherings and you think all Scripture -- including the Ten Commandments, which form the basis of our system of law -- should be removed from the public square. You believe that condemning certain deviant behavior should be a crime.

If you are a "liberal," you think government can make better decisions and spend your money more wisely than you. You believe that legislation can dramatically improve the fortunes of all Americans. You think that taxpayers should foot the bill for many who either don't want to work or can't work as a result of their destructive lifestyles.

A "liberal" today takes comfort in the knowledge that even if America's citizens, legislators and Constitution get it wrong, somewhere there's an unelected judge that will make it right. Especially in the Supreme Court, which to the liberal exceeds the authority of the Constitution.

Research on adult and umbilical cord stem cells have led to cures in 300,000 cases. But that's not what proposition 71 is about.

This is Mel Gibson and I'm concerned that the people aren't fully informed about prop 71.

We have a lot of questions to ask, like why are we being misled into thinking prop 71 isn't about cloning, when it is?

Voters will have to judge for themselves whether Kerry's newly prominent religiosity is genuine or merely a facade adopted for political purposes. Those political purposes are certainly compelling -- according to an August poll by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 85 percent of Americans say religion is important in their lives and 72 percent say it is important to them that a president have strong religious beliefs.

But there is something wrong, it seems to me, with Kerry's glib equation of higher public spending and more lavish government programs with fulfilling one's religious obligations....

Each of us can do more to love our neighbor and to live up to the Judeo-Christian values that American history so strongly affirms. But promiscuous God-talk in presidential campaigns doesn't elevate our spiritual profile. It feeds the suspicion that religion is being invoked for cynical political reasons. Is Kerry right with his God? I certainly hope so. But for nearly 22 years he managed to keep that part of his life extremely private. I wish he would have kept it that way.

I have come to the sobering conclusion that we are in greater danger of a nuclear strike today than we were during the Cold War.

That being the case, can we really wait until an attack to go after the terrorists who perpetrate it? Or do we have to, instead, rethink the whole spirit of Just War arguments, accepting that preemption is the only humane and just solution in an age of terror to accomplish what the Just War doctrine proposes? Today we are dealing with an irrational enemy who knows it cannot conquer us, but will do everything in its power to destabilize us. Can we wait until the attacks--perhaps killing tens of thousands--or should we seek them out and destroy them before they have a chance to destroy us?

This is a huge debate which defies easy answers. The candidates this year are expressing radically different views. Some candidates believe in seeking out the terrorists wherever they hide, and others prefer treating terrorist acts like criminal acts that ought to be dealt with in a "law and order" kind of way.

For decades, plastic surgery for teenage girls meant one thing -- a nose job, frequently performed during the summer between high school and college. While rhinoplasty remains the most common cosmetic operation for teenagers, doctors are performing an increasing number of procedures such as breast implants, liposuction and tummy tucks on young women like Casto and even girls as young as 14.

The enormous popularity of reality TV shows such as "Extreme Makeover," "The Swan" and MTV's "I Want a Famous Face," as well as an explosion of Web sites that extol the virtues of cosmetic medicine, has fueled the desire of adolescent girls to alter their bodies permanently, and they are finding more surgeons willing to oblige them. Breast implants and liposuction are now bestowed by parents as graduation or birthday gifts. Some doctors say they have performed breast augmentations on baby-boomer mothers and their teenage daughters.

We did not go to war to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, but to prevent Saddam from retaining the ability to produce weapons of mass destruction and provide them to his terrorist allies: Abu Nidal, Abu Abas, Abu al-Zarqawi, Yasser Arafat. The joint congressional resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq and passed by majorities in both political parties, Democrats as well as Republicans and John Kerry and John Edwards in particular, has 23 "whereas" clauses articulating the rationale for the use of force. Only one of the 23 focuses on weapons of mass destruction – that is on actual stockpiles of WMDs rather than the programs to develop them (once the UN inspectors were gone)....

We went to war against Saddam Hussein in the spring of 2003, because to withdraw the 200,000 troops without a war and without Saddam’s capitulation to the UN demands would be a catastrophic defeat for the forces of freedom and peace. It would mean with absolute certainty that Saddam would reactivate the weapons programs he had launched and spent more than 40 billion dollars to implement before the United States obstructed them. Saddam was in the process of negotiating an off-the-shelf purchase of nuclear weapons from North Korea, in fact, when the United States entered Iraq to remove him.

The final weeks of the presidential campaign are filled with talk of homosexuality, specifically the vice president's daughter. Beyond and behind this, of course, is the recent sight of homosexual couples lining up to receive marriage licenses. How did it ever come to this, while most of the country was hoping not to have to pay attention?

Not so many years have passed between the moment that New Yorkers were both bemused and amused to learn that their city would have an annual softball game between the cops and the homosexuals, and the day when those couples lined up to receive their licenses. Not so many years, that is, for a cultural journey as vast as the one that took American society from the decision not to persecute homosexuals to the point of the enthusiastic embrace of them. The time seems especially brief considering that in the years between these two phenomena we saw the spread of a new -- and hideous and fatal -- disease that resulted from the corresponding spread of a kind of blind and heedlessly driven homosexual promiscuity.

John Kerry says he wants to "rejoin the community of nations." There is no issue on which the United States more fails the global test of international consensus than Israel. Last July, the General Assembly declared Israel's defensive fence illegal by a vote of 150-6. In defending Israel, America stood almost alone.

You want to appease the "international community"? Sacrifice Israel. Gradually, of course, and always under the guise of "peace." Apply relentless pressure on Israel to make concessions to a Palestinian leadership that has proved (at Camp David 2000) it will never make peace.

Lawmaking inevitably involves some group imposing its beliefs on the rest of us. That's the nature of the democratic process. If we say that we "ought" to do something, we are making a moral judgment. When our legislators turn that judgment into law, somebody's ought becomes a "must" for the whole of society. This is not inherently dangerous; it's how pluralism works....

Catholics have an obligation to work for the common good and the dignity of every person. We see abortion as a matter of civil rights and human dignity, not simply as a matter of religious teaching. We are doubly unfaithful -- both to our religious convictions and to our democratic responsibilities -- if we fail to support the right to life of the unborn child. Our duties to social justice by no means end there. But they do always begin there, because the right to life is foundational.

For Catholics to take a "pro-choice" view toward abortion contradicts our identity and makes us complicit in how the choice plays out. The "choice" in abortion always involves the choice to end the life of an unborn human being. For anyone who sees this fact clearly, neutrality, silence or private disapproval are not options. They are evils almost as grave as abortion itself. If religious believers do not advance their convictions about public morality in public debate, they are demonstrating not tolerance but cowardice.

The openly gay Episcopal bishop whose ordination threatens to fracture the worldwide Anglican Communion said Wednesday he "genuinely and deeply regrets" the pain this caused some believers, but he sees no need to repent because "the Holy Spirit led us."...

He said he finds it "astoundingly important" that there was no call to repentance and that the report stresses the great value of remaining in communion -- willing to meet and pray together."

"Unity is not in unanimity over a particular issue, but in Jesus Christ," he said. "The communion is about relationships, not about laws. The report is very Gospel-like in this way. Jesus was always breaking laws and finding ways to love someone and to do the right thing."

Peace is not doing nothing. Peace is not leaving evildoers on the loose. Peace is not passive, but aggressive, engaging in the far more arduous labor of making peace, of reconciling with people who hate you, of sparing no effort to get inside the other's skin and figuring out how to live together on this planet. Am I blaming America? Of course not; I love America. But doesn't our immense power advantage give us the privilege to craft a foreign policy that is more creative than "If you cross us, we will thump you, and hard"? If I treat my wife or raise my children this way, they will cower in fear, but they will never love me, and we will never have peace.

Why not look to the breeding grounds of terrorism, places like Somalia or Kenya, and ask how to make peace with the teenager there who is being fed plenty of propaganda about how evil America is? Extreme Arab groups at least pretend to care about him, for they are the ones putting up clinics and schools. We have the power, the billions, to go into the poorest places in the world, where people envy Americans, and show that would-be terrorist that we are not the enemy, that we really are good. We could befriend our enemies -- but it's a long, challenging, tough-minded task that can't be captured in a soundbite, and isn't half as appealing as a tough politician waving his fist.

My plea is that we once again say the beautiful name out loud: Peace! Do not be mistaken: God still utters that name that must not be spoken. God pleads for peace, for truth, for reconciliation. We just have to learn to care again, and to take to the streets, to sing those old peace anthems, to dream God's dream. It's still relevant.

The Anglican Communion had a relatively minor crisis as new consciousness about homosexuality struggled to be born in the face of ancient prejudice. This commission has taken this minor crisis and turned it into a major revolution that will move Anglicanism toward the literal-mindedness that now threatens not just Christianity, but religious systems all over the world. That is not a future that anyone should welcome. If this report is adopted, it will create a church ill-equipped to live in the 21st century. Death comes in many forms -- the inability to embrace new reality is one of them.

It is now time to measure the mettle of our elected Anglican leaders. Spines will have to stiffen as they are not used to doing. Popularity will have to be sacrificed for the sake of truth and witness. The next years will determine whether our present leadership has the ability to meet the challenge that they themselves have allowed to develop.

It prays for good will, speaks of the challenge of the gospel and the love of Christ. But commission members - indeed many senior Anglicans - are gloomy about the prospect of reconciling the irreconcilable, bridging the gap between those who believe the Bible is perfectly clear in condemning homosexuality and those who would like to see it reinterpreted for modern society.

The trouble is that the church's traditional remedies of evasion and compromise have deserted it over the issue of gays. As in all marriage breakdowns -- and civil wars -- the two sides have stopped talking to each other, both convinced they are right.

To aver that the idea that "faith without works is dead" is "fundamental" to Christianity is, effectively, to say that Protestants aren't Christian.

Kerry, however, has repeated that assertion numerous times on the campaign trail. Protestants ought to call him on it.

Catholics, too, should take issue with Kerry's formulation of the issue. Granted, it is undeniably true that the Catholic Church fought Martin Luther bitterly over his insistence on the primacy of St. Paul's repeated assertion that men are "justified," or saved, through faith alone. The Catholic Church has indeed cited the passage from the Book of James to argue that good works are important. But to be important is not to be fundamental. The passage from James is not a matter of church doctrine. (More on that a little later in this essay.) But what is a matter of fundamental doctrine is the protection of innocent life (or at least life innocent of all but Original Sin). Here's The Catechism of the Catholic Church on abortion: "Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law."

That is why it is a flat-out theological error, as well as a fallacy of logic, for Kerry to say that "I believe that choice is a woman's choice. It's between a woman, God, and her doctor." There is no cogent way for a Catholic to say he is compelled to express his faith through "works," and to say that he is certain that those required works include specific policy choices "to clean up the environment," and to achieve "equality and justice" -- imperatives that are not policy-specific either in the Bible or in church teaching -- but that he is not compelled as a Catholic to support laws against what the Catechism effectively defines as infanticide.

When he first testified before Congress on stem-cell research, on April 26, 2000, Mr. Reeve said that only embryonic stem cells could produce "true biological miracles," because adult stem cells "are no longer pluripotent, or capable of transforming into other cell types." Many studies contradicted this claim at the time, and dozens more have appeared since. In fact, a few weeks after his testimony, a study funded by his own Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation was published in The Journal of Neuroscience Research, beginning with the sentence: "Pluripotent stem cells have been detected in multiple tissues in the adult, participating in normal replacement and repair while undergoing self-renewal." The authors cited eleven other studies showing the same thing. They proceeded to show why adult bone-marrow stem cells "may constitute an abundant and accessible cellular reservoir for the treatment of a variety of neurologic diseases."

This study funded by Reeve's foundation had been submitted to the journal in March, almost a month before he testified. I asked myself then: How could Mr. Reeve's own scientists not have known that the testimony they prepared for him was false?

Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority on Monday gave its first public indication of which candidate it would like to see in the White House next year.

"If [President] Bush wins, he said he would renew efforts to resume the peace process," PA foreign minister Nabil Shaath told the BBC in London. "However, with the staff that surrounds him and with his current opinions, it doesn't look promising."

Under a Kerry administration, however, "it would be likely that several staff members during Clinton's administration would return," Shaath said. "That would be a good thing, but it could take at least a year before a policy is formulated."

President Bush's Christianity is not an enemy of his reason or deliberation. It is not an enemy of his fact-based decisions or self-reflection. It is the rock upon which he depends in these exceedingly tough times.

Even extreme church-state separatists, until recently, didn't make the absurd demand that our leaders divorce their faith from their governance. Nor are they requiring it of John Kerry.

What's clear is that secularists like Suskind don't believe that strong, committed Christians are well suited for governance. It's also clear they don't worry about John Kerry in this regard, which speaks volumes about their assessment of the sincerity of Kerry's professions of faith. Self-professing Christians may still hold office, provided they either aren't sincere about their faith or they keep it in the closet with the door closed and the lock secured.

Why should gay and lesbian Americans vote for you, since you don't support same-sex marriage?

Because I have a 35-year lifetime record of fighting for equality. Because the difference between me and George Bush will be the difference to gay and lesbian couples and individuals across this country--whether rights are afforded them or whether or not they are discriminated against.

Would you ever change your mind regarding same-sex marriage?

I have my view, and my view is my view. I can't tell you in 20 years or whenever, if someone made a persuasive argument, the world changes. You know, George Bush just changed his mind on a national security director, and he changed his mind on raiding Social Security, and he changed his mind on homeland security. So I don't predict the future. What I tell you is that my position is what it is.

From the pulpit to the pastures, Kerry is increasingly spreading a more spiritual message and visiting local churches, as he did the past two days in Ohio, to expound on the political lessons of the Bible's James and Saint Paul.

"Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come," Kerry intoned Sunday morning at Mt. Olivet Baptist Church. " 'Tis grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home." He told the crowd of 1,500 he wasn't there to preach but went on to, well, preach about the Good Samaritan, the emptiness of a faith devoid of deeds and God's high calling to love one another -- before criticizing from the pulpit President Bush over Social Security and jobs.

"I see deeds and I see a whole lot of things that when you add them up, make you wonder about the public words about values versus the public deeds and works that show values," Kerry said at the Baptist church here.

This, aides say, is Kerry's way of calling into question Bush's commitment to the teachings of the New Testament. In what has become a familiar refrain of Kerry's sermons, he told the story of the Good Samaritan to illustrate God's calling to help the least of America's people.

"This," he said, "is how you reach the kingdom of Heaven."

What underlies Bush's certainty? And can it be assessed in the temporal realm of informed consent?

All of this -- the ''gut'' and ''instincts,'' the certainty and religiosity -connects to a single word, ''faith,'' and faith asserts its hold ever more on debates in this country and abroad. That a deep Christian faith illuminated the personal journey of George W. Bush is common knowledge. But faith has also shaped his presidency in profound, nonreligious ways. The president has demanded unquestioning faith from his followers, his staff, his senior aides and his kindred in the Republican Party. Once he makes a decision -- often swiftly, based on a creed or moral position -- he expects complete faith in its rightness....

Each administration, over the course of a term, is steadily shaped by its president, by his character, personality and priorities. It is a process that unfolds on many levels. There are, of course, a chief executive's policies, which are executed by a staff and attending bureaucracies. But a few months along, officials, top to bottom, will also start to adopt the boss's phraseology, his presumptions, his rhythms. If a president fishes, people buy poles; if he expresses displeasure, aides get busy finding evidence to support the judgment. A staff channels the leader.

A cluster of particularly vivid qualities was shaping George W. Bush's White House through the summer of 2001: a disdain for contemplation or deliberation, an embrace of decisiveness, a retreat from empiricism, a sometimes bullying impatience with doubters and even friendly questioners. Already Bush was saying, Have faith in me and my decisions, and you'll be rewarded. All through the White House, people were channeling the boss. He didn't second-guess himself; why should they?

The influence of President Bush's faith on his foreign policy has been greatly exaggerated by both friends and foes. Enthusiasts proudly call the president's foreign policy "faith based." Detractors angrily assert that the president invaded Iraq and removed Saddam Hussein because he felt God called on him to do so.

But while Mr. Bush has given a number of reasons for invading Iraq -- from its past and potential use of weapons of mass destruction to its suspected stockpiles of such weapons to its sponsorship and harboring of terrorists -- a belief that the Almighty told him to send in the marines was not among them.

Abortion might be a crime in most states. Gay people could be thrown in prison for having sex in their homes. States might be free to become mini-theocracies, endorsing Christianity and using tax money to help spread the gospel. The Constitution might no longer protect inmates from being brutalized by prison guards. Family and medical leave and environmental protections could disappear.

It hardly sounds like a winning platform, and of course President Bush isn't openly espousing these positions. But he did say in his last campaign that his favorite Supreme Court justices were Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, and the nominations he has made to the lower courts bear that out. Justices Scalia and Thomas are often called "conservative," but that does not begin to capture their philosophies. Both vehemently reject many of the core tenets of modern constitutional law.

For years, Justices Scalia and Thomas have been lobbing their judicial Molotov cocktails from the sidelines, while the court proceeded on its moderate-conservative path. But given the ages and inclinations of the current justices, it is quite possible that if Mr. Bush is re-elected, he will get three appointments, enough to forge a new majority that would turn the extreme Scalia-Thomas worldview into the law of the land.

An issue as crucial as the future of marriage in America deserved more than the three minutes CBS newsman Bob Schieffer allowed it during last week's debate between President Bush and Senator John Kerry. And it deserved a more thoughtful introduction than Schieffer's irrelevant question about whether "homosexuality is a choice." (Do we debate issues of religious liberty by first asking if "religion is a choice?")

Even so, in their brief exchange on what may turn out to be the most critical social question of the next four years, Bush and Kerry each said something significant....

Bush is right: It is not in our national interest for so grave a question to be decided by judicial diktat. Far better that it be decided openly and fairly, with public debate and the participation of Congress and the states. Anything else would be profoundly undemocratic -- and unwise.

Kerry ties himself into such knots out of calculation. He cannot admit that he's a social liberal who could care less whether the Catholic Church objects to unborn babies being destroyed, so long as he's getting the votes of feminists by paying obeisance to Roe v. Wade. If Kerry were to make such a frank admission, of course, it would play poorly in swing states where people have the audacity not just to "respect" the moral tenets of their religious faith, but to believe in and act on them.

Kerry's straddle is to have (nominally) socially conservative positions, so long as they won't actually serve any socially conservative ends. He opposes gay marriage, but won't do anything that might stop it from coming about. He thinks life begins at conception (or so he has said, at least once), but won't do anything to stop its destruction. He opposes partial-birth abortion, but votes against banning it, and supports parental notification, but votes against requiring it.

Asked by an undecided voter in the St. Louis town-hall debate whether he would use the tax dollars of pro-life voters to fund abortion, Kerry said again how much he "respects" the pro-life position, but didn't really answer. Translation: "Yes, he will." That is the truest indication of just how little respect he has for the moral teachings of the Catholic Church. What is it they say about faith without deeds again?

What I do object to is this: While Kerry says he's opposed to "legislating" his faith on abortion, he insists that he's in favor of legislating his faith elsewhere. He said more than once Wednesday night, and plenty of times on the stump, that faith must be backed up by deeds. His religious faith, he says, is "why I fight against poverty. That's why I fight to clean up the environment and protect this earth. That's why I fight for equality and justice. All of those things come out of that fundamental teaching and belief of faith."

So, let me get this straight. Fighting for the environment, equality, and education -- in the name of God -- is righteously doing the Lord's work, but abortion must be kept legal because otherwise we'd be legislating religion?...

Personally, I'm ambivalent about the role of religion in politics. I think zealots who want to purge all religion from the public square are ignorant about, among other things, American history and culture. For example, without religion the anti-slavery and civil-rights movements would have been impossible. To me, in politics morality is more important than theology, but it's foolish to dispute that much of our best morality derives from theology.

But what does offend me is the selective invocation of God. George Bush is basically consistent. He says God guides him in everything he does. John Kerry says that, too, but it's hard to see how he's not lying. His faith is clear on abortion. It's pretty darn murky on, say, affirmative action.

The so-called VeriChip Health Information Microtransponder System consists of the implantable computer microchip, an inserter, a proprietary hand-held scanner and a "secure database containing the patient-approved health care information," VeriChip Corp. said.

A group called the Health Privacy Project (HPP) said yesterday that steps should be taken to ensure that only information a patient wants disseminated is available.

"If privacy protections aren't built in at the outset, there could be harmful consequences for patients," HPP policy analyst Emily Stewart told Associated Press.

The goal of the ethically contentious, privately financed work -- which has already gained provisional approval from one Harvard committee -- is to develop new cures for diabetes, Parkinson's disease and other ailments. The approach involves creating cloned human embryos that would be destroyed within days in order to retrieve stem cells growing within.

Several lines of evidence suggest stem cells from cloned embryos have greater potential as medical treatments than stem cells derived from unused embryos at fertility clinics, which are created by in vitro fertilization and are now the major source of stem cells for research.

Apparently, whatever scruples Senator Kerry has about his Catholicism informing his views of abortion and embryonic-stem-cell research don't affect his stances on many other political issues....So it's okay for Senator Kerry's Catholicism to influence his efforts against poverty, or to clean up the environment, or to fight for justice and equality. As he said, "All of those things come out of that fundamental teaching and belief of faith." But for some reason his Catholicism mustn't influence him to support the right to life for unborn children.

Thanks be to God, viewers of the debate were spared one misstatement Senator Kerry has imposed on audiences before: The claim that he accepts the Church's teaching on abortion, despite not being able to "impose that teaching on others." Presumably, he means by "accepting the Church's teaching on abortion" that he thinks abortion is something morally wrong and would never encourage a woman to have one. But, of course, the Church says more than that abortion is immoral. Cursing in your living room is immoral, but the Church doesn't advocate outlawing it.

Abortion is different because unborn children have an inalienable right to life, which the government must secure. Since Senator Kerry doesn't support the right to life for unborn children, it's false for him to claim to accept the Church's teaching on abortion, which includes supporting the right to life.

On its Web site, the Board of Education of Charles County, in Southern Maryland, affirms its belief that "there is value in diversity." That credo is in danger of being distorted by several members of the board. Among the ideas they are advancing: to have science classes offer instructional materials that teach creationism and cast doubt on evolution; to require books that stress America's history as "a Christian nation"; and to revamp sex education so it is informed by "theological perspectives of the Founders." Board members would also invite Gideons International to provide Bibles to students, and cull school reading lists to ban books offering "a neutral or positive view of immorality or foul language."

It is surprising how often the topic of straight divorce comes up in the discussion of gay marriage. The arguments go something like this: "No-fault divorce has cut the link between marriage and permanence. Everyone accepts this. Easy divorce has also called into question to idea that marriage is an institution for the good of the kids. A society that accepts unilateral divorce is a society that is willing to sacrifice the welfare of children to the comfort and happiness of adults, at least to some extent. Since straight people are unwilling to give up no-fault divorce, you can't very well claim that heterosexual marriage is about permanence and children. So how can you justify excluding gays from marriage?"

This rhetorical move ends the argument. The opponent of gay marriage is cowed into silence, for fear of being viewed either as a hypocrite or a bigot. But we need not be shamed into silence on this point. It is just that the alternative response requires us to look the divorce issue squarely in the face.

In the highly competitive world of paid companionship, Mae Lee knows that a string of disappointed clients can hobble an enterprise that thrives on reliability, discretion and customer satisfaction. The disappearance of Rachel meant that seven men that day would have their hourlong sessions canceled, turning their putative business meetings into aching voids of unrequited need....

Although her work is lucrative, she claims it is not just about the money. In a society with so many fraying marriages, Mae Lee says her services help keep families intact.

'Men have their needs,' she said, adding that it is better for a husband to seek satisfaction through a no-strings-attached prostitute than through a marriage-wrecking mistress. That philosophy, she says, partly explains why she closes shop in the evening and on weekends.

'I want these guys to go home after work and spend time with their families,' she said. 'That way everyone is happy.'"

Does the deliberate destruction of a human embryo equate to the taking of a human life?

It's a tough question; at the very least, those who answer in the affirmative deserve respect for their beliefs -- and, in any event, it's not a topic that lends itself to rational discussion in a political campaign.

One need only consider how badly science is served whenever "global warming" is raised to see where the stem-cell debate is headed.

Christopher Reeve was a man of great courage, with equally strong convictions.

His views, too, deserve respect -- but his memory will be done a disservice if it is exploited for partisan gain.

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service, the NHS-funded charity that is the country's largest abortion provider, is facilitating illegal late terminations of healthy pregnancies for hundreds of women without medical justification, an investigation by The Telegraph has revealed.

Extensive covert video and audio recordings exposed a horrific underground industry in which women carrying healthy foetuses beyond the 24-week legal cutoff and who want to end their pregnancies for "social" reasons, travel to an abortion clinic in Spain on the recommendation of BPAS. The organisation refers them there as a matter of "policy".

Staff at the Clinica Ginemedex in Barcelona, last week agreed to abort the completely healthy 26-week foetus of an undercover reporter, who was referred to them by BPAS, without even asking for a reason. Babies born at 26 weeks have a 75 per cent chance of survival. The reporter, who had never intended to go ahead, declined their offer at the last minute.

Serafin brings up the issue of abortion. She asks Park, "If one of your daughters were raped and got pregnant, do you support her right to have an abortion?" Park says, "I do not believe that two wrongs make a right. So, a child created in that situation, as tragic as that is, I'm not going to compound it by having two tragedies. I would counsel my daughter. Let this baby come to term." Next, Serafin addresses Malia, "You are a supporter of abortion, yet you don't believe in the death penalty? Do you find this hypocritical?" Malia answers by saying she does oppose the death penalty because she doesn't believe in murder, but does not believe that abortion is murder. She continues to say, "I do not believe that my father or mother could tell me what to do with my life with something that is going to dramatically affect my life for the rest of my life. And I don't believe the government can do the same thing."

An unapologetic evangelical Christian, Gillespie was the only social conservative among the series' 10 contestants. None of them were really running for president, but as part of the show's "Survivor"-meets-a-political-campaign format they had to advance platforms, give speeches, film ads and engage each other in debates as if they really were.

Gillespie won even though no less a political prognosticator than high-powered pollster Frank Luntz, a consultant to the show, assessed his chances as slim -- given that Showtime's target demographic is 70-30 liberal.

This is just another one of Kerry's specious distinctions without a difference. He would vote only to confirm those justices who would uphold Roe v. Wade (and even partial-birth abortion), but would not apply a litmus test? Empty words, signifying nothing.

Even more disturbing was Kerry's repeated assertion that life begins at conception, but it's not his place to legislate his moral beliefs on the rest of the nation. "But as a president, I have to represent all the people in the nation."

Does this mean we can't pass laws against murder, stealing, rape, slavery or pedophilia, because they are grounded in morality, or because not everyone -- every last one -- agrees?

[Q]: Senator Kerry, suppose you are speaking with a voter who believed abortion is murder and the voter asked for reassurance that his or her tax dollars would not go to support abortion, what would you say to that person?

KERRY: I would say to that person exactly what I will say to you right now.

First of all, I cannot tell you how deeply I respect the belief about life and when it begins. I'm a Catholic, raised a Catholic. I was an altar boy. Religion has been a huge part of my life. It helped lead me through a war, leads me today.

But I can't take what is an article of faith for me and legislate it for someone who doesn't share that article of faith, whether they be agnostic, atheist, Jew, Protestant, whatever. I can't do that.

But I can counsel people. I can talk reasonably about life and about responsibility. I can talk to people, as my wife Teresa does, about making other choices, and about abstinence, and about all these other things that we ought to do as a responsible society.

But as a president, I have to represent all the people in the nation. And I have to make that judgment.

Now, I believe that you can take that position and not be pro- abortion, but you have to afford people their constitutional rights. And that means being smart about allowing people to be fully educated, to know what their options are in life, and making certain that you don't deny a poor person the right to be able to have whatever the constitution affords them if they can't afford it otherwise.

That's why I think it's important. That's why I think it's important for the United States, for instance, not to have this rigid ideological restriction on helping families around the world to be able to make a smart decision about family planning.

You'll help prevent AIDS.

You'll help prevent unwanted children, unwanted pregnancies.

You'll actually do a better job, I think, of passing on the moral responsibility that is expressed in your question. And I truly respect it.

The Supreme Court said Tuesday it will take up the constitutionality of Ten Commandments displays on government land and buildings, a surprise announcement that puts justices in the middle of a politically sensitive issue.

Justices have repeatedly refused to revisit issues raised by their 1980 decision that banned the posting of copies of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.

In the meantime, lower courts have reached a hodgepodge of conflicting rulings that allow displays in some instances but not in others.

The high court will hear an appeal early next year involving displays in Kentucky and Texas.