It may also be true that the radical right will never achieve its stated legal goals--the overturning of Roe v. Wade, passage of the Human Life Amendment, a constitutional amendment forbidding gay marriage, the reinstatement of prayer and Bible reading in the schools--much less such dystopian dreams as making Christianity the national religion, abolishing public schools and banning the Pill and divorce. But that's like saying the left got nothing from FDR because it didn't get socialism. The fact is, anyone who thinks the GOP is stiffing its "moral values" backers hasn't been paying attention: George Bush, for one, has been paying them back for the past four years. He's promoted a raft of anti-choice legislation--including the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act and a law making it easier for health professionals to deny women abortions and even birth control for "reasons of conscience." He's packed the federal bench with antichoice reactionaries, and he's seeded the federal bureaucracy and the government's international agencies with hard-line social conservatives like the faith-healing Dr. W. David Hager of the FDA reproductive health panel. These people wield immense power over regulations and funding and the flow of information. It did not take a Senate majority to keep emergency contraception from being sold over the counter; all it took was compliant Mark McClellan, willing to overlook the recommendation of his own expert panel and the overwhelming weight of medical opinion.

It is safe to say that NARAL Pro-Choice America, the political arm of the abortion rights movement, is facing its biggest fight since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973....Polls have shown that a majority of Americans favor keeping abortion legal. But the Nov. 2 election has strengthened the antiabortion conservative religious right. Newly reelected Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), in line to be chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over Bush's judicial nominations, has faced extraordinary grilling over the last several days by Republican leaders for a comment he made suggesting that antiabortion nominees would have a hard time getting confirmed by the Senate, and religious conservatives are furiously lobbying against him.

Keenan said NARAL Pro-Choice America's job, aside from the expected battle over the Supreme Court, will be to energize and mobilize a new generation of leaders and activists -- young people who grew up with Roe v. Wade -- who will help in the grass-roots efforts for reproductive rights for women.

Though the details differ across cultures, no known culture lacks some version of the time-consuming, wealth-consuming, hostility-provoking, fecundity-forfeiting rituals of religion. All this presents a major puzzle to anyone who thinks in a Darwinian way. We guessed why jays ant. Isn’t religion a similar challenge, an a priori affront to Darwinism, demanding analogous explanation? Why do we pray and indulge in costly practices that, in many individual cases, more or less totally consume lives?...

Darwinian selection sets up childhood brains with a tendency to believe their elders. It sets up brains with a tendency to imitate, hence indirectly to spread rumors, spread urban legends, and believe religions. But given that genetic selection has set up brains of this kind, they then provide the equivalent of a new kind of nongenetic heredity, which might form the basis for a new kind of epidemiology, and perhaps even a new kind of nongenetic Darwinian selection. I believe that religion is one of a group of phenomena explained by this kind of nongenetic epidemiology, with the possible admixture of nongenetic Darwinian selection. If I am right, religion has no survival value for individual human beings, nor for the benefit of their genes. The benefit, if there is any, is to religion itself.

Please read this as an unambiguous call for evangelical Christians to set aside all embarrassment over putting such an emphasis on issues like abortion, homosexuality, and traditional marriage....

So what makes the debate about abortion, homosexuality, and traditional marriage quite different from the debate about the other issues? The answer is amazingly simple--and don't let anyone talk you out of that fact! The answer is that on the issues of abortion, homosexuality, and marriage, one side is claiming that certain behavior is just plain wrong, while the other claims it is not only right, but to be defended. On the other issues, the debate is not about right and wrong, but about extent and about appropriate methodology.

Where, for example, among mainstream conservatives or evangelical Christians do you find those who are affirming the moral rightness of racism? Where do you find those who say we should expand oppression of the poor, or withhold justice from them? Most of us, to be sure, might be rightly charged with having insufficient concern for the ravages of racism or for walking by on the other side of the road when we see our brothers and sisters in need. But that is quite different from proclaiming that disinterest as a virtue.

What I'm getting at, in this land of free speech and home of brave Marines, is my unequivocal belief that Marine X committed no "war crimes" in that fortified Fallujah mosque last week where he shot and killed a prone and wounded terrorist. He was just doing his job -- his hellishly dangerous job -- and thank God for him.

This is hardly the consensus view, at least not the one that is actually spoken out loud. And I don't mean just on Al Jazeera, where the NBC News "get" of the week -- a video sequence of the Marine in question shooting a wounded Fallujah fighter after shouting that the man was "faking" his incapacity -- has been airing at half-hour intervals as if it were the Lost Episodes of Abu Ghraib. "Enlightened" people everywhere are clucking -- but not over the heinous execution of CARE's Margaret Hassan, the mutilated bodies found on Fallujah's streets, the beheading chamber discovered by U.S. soldiers, the Taliban-like decrees threatening death for Fallujah women who don't "cover," or the bomb-making workshops seized before creating more craters of carnage. They emote over the death of a terrorist dedicated to all of the above.

The American Civil Liberties Union has threatened to sue the state of Louisiana because a state website promoting abstinence mentions God.

In a six-page letter, the ACLU claims the state abstinence program has violated a 2002 court settlement by invoking the name of God and quoting biblical passages on the program's taxpayer-funded website, reported the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

The most shocking thing about Nicollette Sheridan exposing her back (but not her backside, alas -- where are the outtakes?) and jumping into Terrell Owens' arms is that anyone could have been shocked by it.

Such delicate flowers we are.

Clucking over the "Desperate Housewives'' promotion featuring Sheridan and Owens that opened "Monday Night Football'' this week.

Clucking over it every time it is rerun on ESPN so it can be castigated once again.

Clucking over it every time it is downloaded from the Internet to see just how disgraceful it was.

Going into the election, 37 states had enacted laws or approved constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage, most of them before the start of the Goodridge suit in Massachusetts, which won seven same-sex couples the right to marry.

''The religious right wanting to deny rights to gay people has been a consistent theme," she said. ''We have always been cautious, but the worst thing to do right now is to stop the public conversation."

Besides, Bonauto said, polls of voters on Election Day give advocates of same-sex marriage cause for optimism. More than half of those surveyed favored extending rights to same-sex couples, an indication, she said, that voters are more willing to recognize gays and lesbians than the 11 electoral defeats suggest. Most of those 11 states had marriage bans in place, and she and other advocates said they had not expected the issue to be a close call in any state except Oregon, where same-sex marriage opponents prevailed with 57 percent of the vote, the smallest of the 11 margins.

The fact is, for most people marriage is not an expression of hatred against homosexuals. The existing definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman was not formulated to persecute or discriminate against gays and lesbians. Most people who oppose a redefinition of marriage are not engaged in a conspiracy to deny gays inheritance and hospital visitation rights. There are millions of people who oppose same-sex marriage yet bear no ill will toward their fellow Americans who are homosexuals.

Instead many of these people voted for the idea that ideally children should have both fathers and mothers, that there is something unique about the arrangement syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher has described as "men and women coming together to make the future happen" worth upholding as a shared social norm. A high percentage of these same people would oppose policies that deliberately make gay and lesbian couples' lives harder, and indeed favor offering them some benefits associated with so-called civil unions as long as it isn't simply marriage without the name. Instead of demonizing these people and enlisting the courts to bully them, maybe gay activists would do well to appeal to their sense of fairness and try to change their minds.

The Palestinians stuck in the miserable refugee camps were always instruments only of Arafat's power. Better for him that the Palestinians should live in poverty than in a state where they could flourish and prosper. Palestinian poverty became a public-relations weapon.

The generous offer made at Camp David in 2000, the best his people could ever expect -- 97 percent of what he had asked, by one estimate -- was turned down in an exercise of breathtaking cynicism. Cruel though he was to the Israelis, his abuse of power was even more hurtful to his own people. He deprived them of a peace delivered through politics unaccompanied by death and destruction. He nevertheless manipulated world opinion with a boffo performance before a world eager to be manipulated.

Following days of spin and commentary, we can confidently declare a new urban legend: George W. Bush was elected by right-wing, science-hating, vengeful Christian zealots -- "revved up by rectitude," as one pundit put it -- and America is embarked on a hatchet-wielding jihad against heathens, pagans and infidels....

The debate, meanwhile, about whether "moral values" was the compelling force behind Bush's victory seems slightly off point. Exit polls showing "moral values" as the most important issue for voters (22 percent cited it) were refuted subsequently by other polls, leading some to insist that the election wasn't about values after all.

What they mean, probably correctly, is that the election wasn't only about far-right concerns such as same-sex marriage, abortion and stem cell research. But of course it was about moral values -- what's right and what's wrong, from war to national character -- and the vote took us right of center.

Islamic militant groups that are behind many suicide bombings dismissed on Tuesday a call from interim Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to halt attacks in the run-up to a Jan. 9 election to replace Yasser Arafat.

Abbas, who is trying to work out a deal with rival Palestinian groups on a cease-fire and possible power-sharing, resisted a call by the groups for a share of power despite their planned boycott of the election.

The "faith factor" problem of some Democrats is not that they do not have faith. It is that some have faith in the wrong things.

The Democratic gospel preaches an all-encompassing faith that politics and government will solve our personal problems. Not earning enough money? Don't have a high-school diploma? Not happy with your insurance policy or retirement plan? Is your daughter pregnant? Feel in general that your life is out of control? Turn to President, Senator or Congressman Democrat and get it solved.

Many Democratic leaders and pundits are expressing consternation at Republican Party claims that it is the party of values. They claim that Democrats have the moral high ground and that their problem is communication. But check out what they call values: Government-run health care, government-run schools, government-run personal retirement and a politically defined and managed overall sense of social justice.

"We are encouraged by our continued progress in reducing births to teens of all ages, but we’re particularly pleased to make this kind of progress in such a young and vulnerable group," said CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding.

This report, Births to 10 to 14 Year-Old Mothers, 1990-2002: Trends and Health Outcomes, is the first ever analysis of births to this group of very young mothers, and was prepared by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.

Between 1990 and 2002 almost 137,000 of these young mothers delivered a live birth. This number has declined steadily from a peak of 12,901 in 1994, to the current low of 7,315. If the 1990 rate had held through 2002, there would have been 34,336 additional births to the youngest teens.

According to a transcript of the show, Keillor said, "I am now the chairman of a national campaign to pass a constitutional amendment to take the right to vote away from born-again Christians. [enthusiastic audience applause] Just a little project of mine. My feeling is that born-again people are citizens of heaven, that is where there (sic) citizenship is, [laughter] is in heaven, it's not here among us in America. ..."

According to a report in the University of Chicago's Chicago Maroon, Keillor told the audience: "If born-again Christians are allowed to vote in this country, then why not Canadians?"

Brace yourselves. The movie, Kinsey, opened in theaters last Friday, introducing a new generation of Americans to the infamous "father" of sex research in America. Yet, the movie is really not a true portrait of Alfred Kinsey at all. Instead of portraying the twisted and tormented mind of this propagandist for the sexual revolution, the movie presents Kinsey as an angel of light who brought America out of repression and darkness....

Alfred C. Kinsey is one of the most controversial figures in American history--and for good reason. An entomologist by training, Kinsey turned from his intense fascination with the gall wasp to the study of human sexuality. He burst upon the American scene with his pioneering 1948 volume, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Eventually, Indiana University was to establish the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, and the name "Kinsey" was to be associated with progressivist sex education, opposition to traditional sexual morality, and liberation from fixed concepts of "normal" when dealing with human sexuality. The Kinsey Institute has what many consider to be the world's largest collection of pornography, sexually explicit art, and various sexual objects. What the institute does not advertise is its links to data gathered by child molesters and sex criminals.

With Bush's election, Dobson has won a major battle. But success brings its own perils. It's quite possible that Dobson, his hopes having been raised, will find them dashed. After all, Republican strategists will surely realize that too strong an anti-gay stand could further alienate moderates and independents (groups that John Kerry actually won this year). Dobson himself predicted future disappointment during an appearance on ABC's This Week last Sunday. Asked whether Bush would fail evangelicals, Dobson replied, "I'm sure he will fail us. He doesn't dance to our tune." If that's true, and Dobson believes his words about putting principle ahead of power, then his new bond with the GOP may already be in jeopardy.

Perhaps more damaging is the possibility that Dobson gets what he wants. Maybe the GOP will establish an anti-abortion Supreme Court, overturn Roe v. Wade, stamp out gay rights, ban stem-cell research forever, and shut down MTV and cancel The Bachelor. Voters may not be so pleased with the Republican Party after that. Despite the qualms they showed about gay marriage this year, there's no reason to think they want anything like Dobson's Utopia, and they could see a replay of, say, 1998, when the perception that angry culture warriors were running the GOP damaged the party at the polls. In one of his books, Dobson has written of the gay-rights movement that "[e]vil has a way of overreaching." So does the far right.

There's only one problem with the storyline proclaiming that the country swung to the right on cultural issues in 2004. Like so many other narratives that immediately calcify into our 24/7 media's conventional wisdom, it is fiction. Everything about the election results - and about American culture itself - confirms an inescapable reality: John Kerry's defeat notwithstanding, it's blue America, not red, that is inexorably winning the culture war, and by a landslide. Kerry voters who have been flagellating themselves since Election Day with a vengeance worthy of "The Passion of the Christ" should wake up and smell the Chardonnay.

The blue ascendancy is nearly as strong among Republicans as it is among Democrats. Those whose "moral values" are invested in cultural heroes like the accused loofah fetishist Bill O'Reilly and the self-gratifying drug consumer Rush Limbaugh are surely joking when they turn apoplectic over MTV. William Bennett's name is now as synonymous with Las Vegas as silicone. The Democrats' Ashton Kutcher is trumped by the Republicans' Britney Spears. Excess and vulgarity, as always, enjoy a vast, bipartisan constituency, and in a democracy no political party will ever stamp them out.

The fawning world leaders saying this seem oblivious to the obvious paradox. If he was such a great leader, how is it that he left his people so destitute, desperate, wounded and bereft that only his passing gives them a hope for a fulfillment of their deepest aspirations?

Arafat's apologists explain this by saying that is because he had one weakness: indecisiveness. In the end, he just could not pull the trigger. When offered the deal of the century by Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak at Camp David 2000, he was somehow too conflicted, too ambivalent to say yes.

Ambivalent? Nonsense. Yasser Arafat was supremely decisive and single-minded. He was not complex and, regarding Israel's fate, never conflicted. Indeed the reason for his success, such as it was -- creating the Palestinian movement from which he derived fortune, fame, and reverence -- was precisely his single-mindedness. Not about Palestinian statehood -- if that was his objective, he could have had his state years ago -- but about the elimination of Jewish statehood.

Europe today has little in common with Red State America. For, even as Americans were rejecting gay marriage, Spain followed Holland and Belgium in granting homosexuals the right to marry, divorce and adopt.

But how far are we behind Europe in entering this brave new world?

Since World War II, divorce has become routine in the United States. Cohabitation among unmarried couples increased tenfold in the last 30 years. Abortion and sodomy are now constitutional rights.

Gay marriage has become the civil-rights cause of the college campuses. California has voted to fund embryonic stem-cell research. Assisted suicide has been voted into law in Oregon. De-Christianization of our public schools and institutions, begun half a century ago, proceeds apace, sanctioned and ordered by our federal courts.