There was an honest, forthright case for ending the life of Terri Schiavo. It was that her life no longer had any value, for herself or others, and that ending it -- the quicker the better -- would spare everyone misery. We disagree with that view, holding it wiser to stick with the Judeo-Christian tradition on the sanctity of innocent life. But the people who made this case deserve some credit for straightforwardness.

But while the public may have agreed with the removal of Schiavo's feeding and hydration tube, apparently there are limits to the public's willingness to tolerate euthanasia -- and apparently its defenders recognized these limits. So we saw euphemism after euphemism deployed to cloud the issues.

Perhaps chief among these was the fiction that we were "letting her die." On March 18, Schiavo was in no medical danger of death. She was profoundly brain-damaged (although just how profoundly remains unknown), but she was not in a coma or on a respirator. She was not being kept alive by artificial means, any more than small children are kept alive by artificial means when their parents feed them. Her body was functioning, there is some reason to believe she was minimally conscious, and she was responsive to stimuli (it's been reported she was actually being administered pain medication). She had devoted parents and siblings who were willing to care for her. She could easily have gone on in these conditions for many years. She was not close to dying. For death to arrive, she would have to be killed.

Romney supports the use of embryos left over from in vitro fertilization, which might be discarded anyway. He opposes ''therapeutic cloning" or ''somatic cell nuclear transfer." That involves taking the nucleus of a cell such as a skin, heart, or nerve cell and implanting it in a human egg cell that has had its own nucleus removed. The egg would be stimulated to grow in a laboratory dish for several days until it becomes a ball of about 200 cells called a ''blastocyst." Researchers then develop a new batch of embryonic stem cells from this ''blastocyst." The egg is never fertilized, so supporters such as Travaglini and Kennedy say scientists are not creating life.

To write the above paragraph, I drew upon a detailed explanation offered by The Boston Globe. Proponents prefer to talk about stem cell research in connection with medical hope and jobs, and opponents prefer to talk about ethics and respect for life. The scientific distinctions are complex and confusing.

The easiest thing to understand about stem cell research is that it is another political football in the bitter ''culture wars," just like gay marriage, abortion, and Terry Schiavo's right to live or die.

I do not fault religious people for political action. Since Moses confronted the pharaoh, faithful people have heard God's call to political involvement. Nor has political action been unique to conservative Christians. Religious liberals have been politically active in support of gay rights and against nuclear weapons and the death penalty. In America, everyone has the right to try to influence political issues, regardless of his religious motivations.

The problem is not with people or churches that are politically active. It is with a party that has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement.

When government becomes the means of carrying out a religious program, it raises obvious questions under the First Amendment. But even in the absence of constitutional issues, a political party should resist identification with a religious movement. While religions are free to advocate for their own sectarian causes, the work of government and those who engage in it is to hold together as one people a very diverse country. At its best, religion can be a uniting influence, but in practice, nothing is more divisive. For politicians to advance the cause of one religious group is often to oppose the cause of another.

The moral imperative is the only reason for becoming a politician in the first place. There is more money to be earned outside parliament than in. Westminster offers notoriety rather than fame. The work is far more arduous than the tasks performed by journalists who criticise the empty benches. There is no point in being in politics unless you have a clear view of a better society that you hope to create, and a willingness to go on struggling to bring it about even when you know that, at least in your lifetime, your efforts will fail. If that is not a definition of the moral vocation, it is hard to know what is.

My aspiration is the equal society -- defined by Matthew Arnold (conveniently for politicians who seek a moral dimension) as like the Holy Grail. To find it, we must search for it; and to search for it, we must believe in it. Don't tell me that politicians who take a diametrically opposite position have no ethical principles. They are, in my view, wrong. But that does not make them (or me) inferior to men and women who believe in the supernatural.

Ruling that juries cannot turn to the Bible for advice during deliberations, a divided Colorado Supreme Court threw out the death penalty for a convicted murderer because jurors discussed Bible verses....

Monday's ruling said the Bible and other religious writings are considered "codes of law by many" in Colorado. But noting that it takes a unanimous jury to impose a death sentence here, the court said "at least one juror in this case could have been influenced by these authoritative passages ... when he or she may otherwise have voted for a life sentence."

Arguments about Terri's case centered on something described as a "culture of life." It is an empty suit of a phrase, absent an individual to give it shape. There is no culture of life. There is the culture of your life, and the culture of mine. There is what each of us considers bearable, and what we will not bear. There are those of us who believe that under certain conditions the cruelest thing you can do to people you love is to force them to live. There are those of us who define living not by whether the heart beats and the lungs lift but whether the spirit is there, whether the music box plays....

No public official is going to tell me how to xoxo my sister. No church, no court. The Schiavo case has asked us to look at our own definition of life, not at some formless notion cobbled out of the Bible, medical textbooks and impersonal sentiment. My sister's throaty laugh, her prodigious knowledge of history, her garrulous nature: that's the true picture of her, the one with the light in her eyes. She's counting on me to make certain that image is not replaced by something empty and depleted. She's counting on me to safeguard her dignity and her humanity, which are one and the same.

Many of us feel the way she does. Once the feeding tube was removed, polls showed that the majority of Americans believed Terri Schiavo should be allowed to die. That's probably because they've been there. They are the true judges and lawmakers and priests. They've been at the bedside, watching someone they love in agony as cancer nipped at the spine, as the chest rose and fell with the cruel mimicry of the respirator, as the music of personality dwindled to a single note and then fell silent. They know life when they see it, and they know it when it is gone.

The liberals have fought a three hundred year war against Christ, and if man and reason are to make suitable replacement gods, they must have certain divine powers. But what powers can a substitute god have? God is the Author of life, but man can be the author of death.

This obsession with death can be seen throughout history. Consider the butchery during the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the Nazi atrocities. Consider the careless disregard for life by all the former communist regimes. In Leftist societies, life is cheap. Abortion is a holy sacrament to the liberal. To the deathheads, human will is the final master, and death serves as an instrument of that will.

By controlling the time, place, and manner of death, the deathheads have a semblance of the powers of the divine. Possibly, that is why the death of Terri Schiavo is so important to them. They want the right to control the end of life as a means to reinforce and sanctify their own inner beliefs. They also know that the Schiavo case is going to set a memorable public precedent. If they could force the death of Terri despite the pro-life forces arrayed against them, they would establish their right to command death for the innocent. If they have the right to kill when their reason adjudges it necessary, they have established their coequality with the Creator.

Democrats oddly tend to go too far, overadjusting, when they do God talk. In his desperation to invoke religion toward the end of the 2004 campaign, John Kerry compared George Bush to a "false prophet" from the Bible, a harsh charge given that false prophets could be stoned or crucified. Howard Dean said in February, "When you think of the New Testament, [Republicans] get about two of the values, and we get about 27." Dean's bottom line: Democrats are better Christians than Republicans. While it's possible to imagine some televangelist on the conservative side making the opposite claim, no responsible figure in the GOP would ever say such a thing....

[Jim] Wallis reminds us that Jesus wasn't "pro-rich," and extrapolates from that that Christians must support higher taxes. Now, the New Testament obviously enjoins us to care for the poor. But what mix of policies is best suited to do that is a practical question. Conservatives happen to think everyone is best served by a low-tax, high-growth economy and by social policies -- e.g., welfare reform -- that encourage the inner-city poor to work and marry.

To pretend that this mix of policies is forbidden by Christ is a frank abuse of religion. We can draw from the New Testament broad principles -- value human life, care for the poor, create a free and just society -- but we don't receive guidance about how to handle capital business expenses in the tax code or whether Medicare reimbursement rates are too high or too low. Jesus didn't work at the Brookings Institution.

At a time when government, culture, science, medicine and the rule of law are all under threat from an emboldened religious minority out to remake America according to its dogma, the half-forgotten show business history of "The Ten Commandments" provides a telling back story....The religio-hucksterism surrounding the Schiavo case makes DeMille's Hollywood crusades look like amateur night. This circus is the latest and most egregious in a series of cultural shocks that have followed Election Day 2004, when a fateful exit poll question on "moral values" ignited a take-no-prisoners political grab by moral zealots. During the commercial interruptions on "The Ten Commandments" last weekend, viewers could surf over to the cable news networks and find a Bible-thumping show as only Washington could conceive it. Congress was floating such scenarios as staging a meeting in Ms. Schiavo's hospital room or, alternatively, subpoenaing her, her husband and her doctors to a hearing in Washington. All in the name of faith....

These theatrics were foretold. Culture is often a more reliable prophecy than religion of where the country is going, and our culture has been screaming its theocratic inclinations for months now. The anti-indecency campaign, already a roaring success, has just yielded a new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Kevin J. Martin, who had been endorsed by the Parents Television Council and other avatars of the religious right. The push for the sanctity of marriage (or all marriages except Terri and Michael Schiavo's) has led to the banishment of lesbian moms on public television. The Armageddon-fueled worldview of the "Left Behind" books extends its spell by the day, soon to surface in a new NBC prime-time mini-series, "Revelations," being sold with the slogan "The End is Near."

Supporters of Terri Schiavo are guided by faith. Their pursuit to save Schiavo, who her parents say is a devout Roman Catholic, are continuing into Holy Week and propelling her life into the center of a passionate national debate.

From the vigils to the lawyers and even the politicians -- all are raising challenging questions about life and death, right and wrong, faith and politics.

But why has Schiavo's life galvanized so many people? Analysts say her case is an extension of the abortion debate -- a highly charged, emotional subject influenced by religious beliefs.

Everyone who has written in defense of Mrs. Schiavo's right to live has received e-mail blasts full of attacks that appear to have been dictated by the unstable and typed by the unhinged....Why are they so committed to this woman's death?

They seem to have fallen half in love with death.

What does Terri Schiavo's life symbolize to them? What does the idea that she might continue to live suggest to them?

Why does this prospect so unnerve them? Again, if you think Terri Schiavo is a precious human gift of God, your passion is explicable. The passion of the pull-the-tube people is not.

I do not understand their certainty. I don't "know" that any degree of progress or healing is possible for Terri Schiavo; I only hope they are. We can't know, but we can "err on the side of life." How do the pro-death forces "know" there is no possibility of progress, healing, miracles? They seem to think they know. They seem to love the phrases they bandy about: "vegetative state," "brain dead," "liquefied cortex."

I am as devout a Darwinist as anybody. I read all the essays on evolution by the late Stephen Jay Gould, one of my favorite writers. The God I worship would, I think, be smart enough to create the universe without, as Genesis alleges, violating His own observable laws of conservation of matter and energy in a six-day construction binge. But after interviewing supporters and opponents of intelligent design, which argues among other things that today's organisms are too complex to have evolved from primordial chemicals by chance or necessity, I think critiques of modern biology, like Ladendorff's contrarian lessons, could be one of the best things to happen to high school science....

Amazingly, neither pro- nor anti-intelligent design people like the idea of injecting their squabble into biology classes. John West, associate director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which promotes intelligent design, said that requiring its use in schools would turn their critique of evolution "into a political football." Eugenie C. Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education Inc. in Oakland, Calif., said it would distract from proven evolutionary research, crowd out other topics and create confusion....Turning Darwin into an unassailable god without blemishes, Campbell said, doesn't give student brains enough exercise. "If you don't see the risks, if you don't see the gaps," he said, "you don't see the genius of Darwin."

Social conservatives spend an inordinate amount of hand-wringing over the threat to traditional marriage posed by the legal recognition of same-sex relationships. Gay marriage is, of course, a legitimate concern. But it would take an army of homosexual rights activists several decades to do as much damage to the sacred institution as heterosexuals have done by tolerating no-fault divorce and the repeal of common law marriage. The looming threat pales in comparison to the present danger of destructive marriage laws which have, for at least one young woman, literally become a matter of life and death.

The law, that vital foundation of our civilization, seems incapable of getting to justice of any sort in this sad case. If it is justice to end her life, the law has so developed that a painless injection would be illegal, while the only legal method -- starvation and dehydration to death -- would be unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment if it were inflicted on a convicted mass murderer.

If it is justice to find a caring relative to take care of her, the law is debarred from reaching out to the waiting, loving arms of her parents and brother -- being obliged to honor the primary relationship of marriage over the secondary relationship of parenthood -- despite the doubts as to the wandering spouse's sincerity of concern.

If it is justice to leave to science to determine the certainty of her permanent unconsciousness, then science has failed to respond decisively to that call. Perhaps in a few years the science of the brain will advance sufficiently to tell a doctor precisely of what a human brain is aware....It seems that the smarter we get, the more morally confused we get....Without overplaying the "slippery slope leading to Hitlerian conclusions" argument, it does seem that as science advances, and the law lumbers awkwardly behind it, even decent people are likely to be thrown into ever larger zones of moral confusion.

U.S. District Judge James Whittemore said the 41-year-old woman's parents had not established a "substantial likelihood of success" at trial on the merits of their arguments.

Schiavo's tube was removed Friday after the appeals of her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, to keep the tube in failed in state court. Tuesday marked the fourth day without her feeding tube.

The most troubling aspect of this whole case is the impropriety of the request to euthanize Ms. Schiavo. There is a reason that a Power of Attorney is required for important decisions, not just the second hand whisperings of a frustrated man.

If my wife, while I am at sea on my submarine, needs to sell my car because someone totalled it, she cannot do it without my power of attorney stating that I desire her to have that power. If I die, she cannot make decisions that are opposed by my Last Will and Testament as signed a few months ago; but here we have a clear example of someone without written guidance doing what they want to do.

This wouldn't be as much an issue if the case were different and the support really necessary for immediate existence (ie respirator), but to think that my wife could starve me without my permission just because I couldn't speak is horrid.

What are we thinking in giving the ultimate decision to someone who so obviously may not have Ms. Schiavo's best interests at heart?

The path to the cultural crossroad at which we find ourselves was blazed by judicial proceedings aimed at deciding whose life has value. How ironic is it, then, that these circumstances have actually reduced us to asking for Terri to be placed at the mercy of...yet another judicial proceeding?

The fact that the case will now be reviewed by a jurist who happens to be a federal judge hardly means the outcome here will necessarily be different than it was in the state courts. Now that the dust has settled, it's probably worth asking about the composition -- as in the general judicial philosophies -- of the judges sitting on the federal bench in the Middle District of Florida. The "right to die" is yet another pet cause of the "progressive" vanguard. As we have come to know all too well, such movements tend to have more fellow travelers among legal elites (including the federal judiciary) than among the general population.

Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies; Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's. The LORD executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed. He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel. The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger for ever. He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him....As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's children.

Teens who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are more likely to take chances with other kinds of sex that increase the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, a study of 12,000 adolescents suggests.

The report by Yale and Columbia University researchers could help explain their earlier findings that teens who pledged abstinence are just as likely to have STDs as their peers.

The latest study, published in the April issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that teens pledging virginity until marriage are more likely to have [other forms of physical intimacy] than other teens who have not had intercourse. That behavior, however, "puts you at risk," said Hannah Brueckner, assistant professor of sociology at Yale and one of the study's authors.

Life is full of surprise and lightning-like lurches. The person in a coma today wakes up tomorrow and says, "Is that you, mom?" Life is unknowable. Always give it a chance to shake your soul and upend reality.

The supporters of Terri Schiavo's right to continue living have fought for her heroically, through the courts and through the legislatures. They're still fighting. They really mean it. And they have memories.

On the other side of this debate, one would assume there is an equally well organized and passionate group of organizations deeply committed to removing Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. But that's not true. There's just about no one on the other side. Or rather there is one person, a disaffected husband who insists Terri once told him she didn't want to be kept alive by extraordinary measures.

He has fought the battle to kill her with a determination that at this point seems not single-minded or passionate but strange. His former wife's parents and family are eager to care for her and do care for her, every day. He doesn't have to do a thing. His wife is not kept alive by extraordinary measures--she breathes on her own, is not on a respirator. All she needs to continue existing--and to continue being alive so that life can produce whatever miracle it may produce--is a feeding tube.

It doesn't seem a lot.

So politically this is a struggle between many serious people who really mean it and one, just one, strange-o. And the few bearded and depressed-looking academics he's drawn to his side.

It is not at all in the political interests of senators and congressmen to earn the wrath of the pro-Schiavo group and the gratitude of the anti-Schiavo husband, by doing nothing.

So let me write a sentence I never thought I'd write: Politicians, please, think of yourselves! Move to help Terri Schiavo, and no one will be mad at you, and you'll keep a human being alive. Do nothing and you reap bitterness and help someone die.

This isn't hard, is it?

Congress does not generally smile these days on the power of the federal courts to review alleged constitutional errors by state courts....Except, apparently, in the case of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman in a persistent vegetative state whom the Florida courts, after careful consideration, decided would not want to live under such circumstances. With Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube scheduled to be removed today, Congress sprang into action to pass legislation granting the federal courts the power to review the state court judgments that would let her die. (The Florida legislature is, for the second time, also acting to force her to continue living.) On Wednesday night the House of Representatives passed a bill to let "an incapacitated person" -- or someone who cares about him or her -- go to federal court whenever a state court "authorizes or directs the withholding or withdrawal of food" and when there is no undisputed living will. The Senate passed a narrower bill yesterday that would deal with Ms. Schiavo's case alone -- allowing her parents, who wish to keep her alive, a shot at the federal courts.

Both bills make a mockery of the professed conservative devotion to the sovereignty of states and the integrity of their courts. There is no great constitutional question to litigate here. Nonetheless, the broader House bill would create endless opportunities to involve the federal courts in heart-rending end-of-life struggles within families. And the Senate bill is nothing more than a warrantless intervention by the national legislature in a specific case that -- no matter how much members might dislike the result -- is no business of Congress.

The facts of the Schiavo case are repugnant. Notwithstanding the Post’s insistence, it is not clear that Terri is in a persistent vegetative state...nor is there convincing evidence that Terri, when she was stricken at 26 years of age, had even given much thought to whether she’d want to continue living in her current condition, much less expressly asserted that she would not. Still, it is far from obvious that the facts of this case will establish a violation of federal law. If there hasn’t been such a violation, the Schiavo bills being debated would not permit the federal court to reverse the state courts, even if the federal judge disagrees with how the state courts handled the matter.

Finally, as for the alleged inconsistency, there is, of course, no greater iniquity than treating two unequal things as if they were the same. The Washington Post’s editorial board should find another line of work if it cannot discern the difference between, on the one hand, a murderer who stands convicted despite having had had rich resort to various state and federal tribunals -- including a jury of his peers -- with the advantage of every legal and factual presumption our system can offer, and, on the other hand, an innocent woman who is alive and responsive to stimuli, who has parents ready and willing to care for her, and who is about to be subjected to two weeks of torture -- starving and dehydration -- that the Washington Post would have a cow over if it were applied, say, to interrogate Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Working against the clock, House lawmakers tried to prevent doctors in Florida from removing the feeding tube Friday from a severely brain-damaged woman.

In a two-pronged approach, a House committee was issuing congressional subpoenas to stop doctors from disconnecting the tube, while an attorney for the parents of the woman, Terri Schiavo, said he would ask a federal judge in Tampa to block the removal and review the actions of state courts....

In a last-ditch attempt to stop the court-ordered removal, a House committee on Capitol Hill here decided early Friday morning to start an investigation into Schiavo's case and issue subpoenas ordering doctors and hospice administrators not to remove her feeding tubes and to keep her alive until that investigation was complete.

SILVERMAN: Because it's capitalism. They're living in a place that is growing more and more diverse. And they're recognizing the fact that Easter is only Christian. And even though it doesn't have Christian roots, they're recognizing that is more than Christian, and they want to play on the safe side. They want to sell more stuff. When it comes right down to it, these malls want to sell more stuff. They don't want to...

BECKEL: If the Easter Bunny goes away, my kids are going to absolutely floor me. I'll tell you.

SILVERMAN: The Easter Bunny is not going away. It's just having a different name.

SEAN HANNITY, CO-HOST: You know something, David? Look, where is the tolerance on the left anymore? I mean, this is the Easter Bunny. This is about Bob's kids and my kids going to the mall. Are you really going to be hurt, are you really going to be offended by a mall identifying a bunny as the Easter Bunny? Is your faith shaken that deeply?

SILVERMAN: On a scale of one to ten, we're talking about a two. But on a scale of one to ten, the actual act of calling it something more neutral is nice to see. You know, it's nicer to see.

Is it a matter of happenstance, is it without meaning, that America was taken by this drama at Eastertide, in the days before Palm Sunday, when a wanted man rode by donkey to an appointment at Golgotha?

Is it an accident that a great but troubled country that yearns so to be good is given such instruction at this time?

Maybe we should be thinking: God loves all of us, every one of us most tenderly, even convicts, maybe especially convicts, who know what they are and hang their heads and one of whom, so long ago, looked up, and cried out to the man on the other cross, and received from him a promise of forgiveness and a promise that soon, very soon, they would stand together in a place without pain.

Maybe we should think: This is all quite a mystery, too big to be understood, too beautiful to be ignored.

I just feel like bowing to everyone, all the victims and all the survivors, the good judge, the good guards, the good woman, the reporters, all of whom became part of something big and without borders. The only lesson is love. I feel certain this is true.

BURY: The parents also argue that you have moved on with your life, that you now have children that you're with, another woman, and that you could, essentially, divorce Terri and relinquish guardianship to them. Why don't you do that?

SCHIAVO: If I moved on with my life -- and I moved on with a portion of it -- but I still have a big commitment to Terri. I made her a promise.

And another reason why I won't give Terri back is that Mr. Schindler testified in court, at the 2000 trial, that he would -- to keep Terri alive he would cut her arms and legs off and put her on a ventilator just to keep her alive.

So why would I give her to a man that would do that to you?

Last week, I introduced my first piece of legislation in the Senate: The Incapacitated Person's Legal Protection Act of 2005. This bill would ensure that incapacitated individuals -- like Terri Schiavo -- would have their due-process rights of habeas corpus when a court orders their death by removal of nutrition, hydration and medical treatment. My colleague from Florida, Congressman Dave Weldon has introduced identical legislation in the House of Representatives....

This bill is very narrowly written and a balanced approach to acknowledging the rights of individuals to refuse consent to medical treatment with the right to consent to treatment to preserve life....This is not a right-to-life or right-to-die issue -- it is about proper legal representation for individuals with no voice for themselves. It's about giving a last avenue of legal refuge to disabled individuals when their lives hang in the balance.

This is a narrowly tailored, compassionate piece of legislation to ensure that Terri Schiavo has all legal due process available to her before following through on a court order that, in all seriousness, is a death sentence.

California superior-court judge Richard Kramer has managed to be even breezier than the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in striking down traditional marriage laws. Like the jurists on the other coast, he finds the law's definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman not just wrong or outdated but irrational. He does not hold (as they did not hold) that the reasons for holding the view of marriage that everyone has held for millennia are defeated by other, better reasons; he holds (as they held) that there are no good reasons in the first place. He has never heard of a possible reason to regard marriage as a male-female union. That view of marriage, Kramer holds, again in keeping with the Massachusetts ruling, cannot survive even the lowest level of scrutiny a judge can bring to bear on a statute.

But in one respect, Kramer goes a step beyond Massachusetts. The Massachusetts court considered the claim that marriage might be defined as the union of a man and a woman because marriage has something to do with procreation. It then ruled that since the culture, various pieces of legislation, and previous judicial decisions had weakened the links among marriage, sex, and the raising of children, marriage therefore had nothing to do with procreation and any features of the marriage law premised on a contrary belief had to go. The reasoning was specious: From the premise that the law and the culture contain inconsistent views of marriage, it does not follow that the court should resolve the inconsistency by throwing out those elements it dislikes.

When a California judge ruled on Monday that the state's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, the decision generated national headlines and scathing criticism. But the decision is hardly news, and the judge is hardly an activist.

The decision itself is just the latest in a long line of recent cases recognizing the rights of same-sex couples. In 1993, Hawaii's Supreme Court ruled that discrimination against same-sex couples likely violated that state's Constitution. The court sent the case back to a trial court, and the judge struck down the marriage restrictions. Hawaii's voters then amended their Constitution to limit marriage to a man and a woman, but court cases continued to follow Hawaii's lead....It is true that Judge Kramer declared a ballot initiative enacted by the state's voters unconstitutional. But that ballot initiative was not supported by voters in the Bay Area, and it does not appear to align with the views of a majority of the Legislature in Sacramento. One can disagree with Judge Kramer's ruling, but it is difficult to argue that his views are outside the mainstream.

In short, we have congressional agreement on both sides of the aisle that abortion is tragic. The abortion landscape has changed in this country, and the culture of life has gained significant ground. There is hope for legislative movement as we haven't seen in years.

But beware. An ad from NARAL Pro-Choice America addressed to "the right-to-life movement" would be almost humorous if it weren't for those 1.3 million killings annually in this country. "Please Help Us Prevent Abortions," says the ad, which appeared in The Weekly Standard and other publications. Actually, the headline is misleading: The text of the ad explains better its call for support of a bill "which would reduce unwanted pregnancies." The legislation, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's Prevention First Act (co-sponsored by Democrats with 100 percent ratings from abortion-rights groups and 0 percent ratings from pro-life groups), is a pro-life nightmare. It would double federal funds to "family planning" groups like Planned Parenthood and NARAL while barring funds for programs that emphasize sexual abstinence. Hospitals that get any federal funds would have to provide the morning-after pill (which prevents fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus) on demand, and companies that oppose contraception or abortifacients would be forced to provide insurance coverage for them.

Essentially, NARAL's pitch amounts to: Help us reduce unwanted pregnancies by helping us end pregnancies. No thanks. If abortion-rights supporters want to join pro-life groups in areas that match both groups' rhetoric, there's already plenty on the table.

As we have said many times before, the issue of whether the state can deny a citizen the rights and responsibilities of marriage on the basis of sexual orientation is fundamental to the U.S. Constitution's promise of equal protection. It may take years to resolve.

In the meantime, Kramer's ruling offers a measure of vindication to Mayor Gavin Newsom's decision last year to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples at San Francisco City Hall. At the time, the mayor's action was widely derided as being in reckless defiance of the law. Newsom maintained that time -- and the law -- was on his side.

Kramer's ruling showed there was a reasonable legal foundation to challenge the state law that limits the definition of marriage to being between a man and a woman.

In a shift whose ideological breadth is unusual in the fragmented Protestant world, a long-standing wall around Mary appears to be eroding. It is not that Protestants are converting to Catholicism's dramatic exaltation: the singing of Salve Regina, the Rosary's Marian Mysteries, the entreaty to her in the Hail Mary to "pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death." Rather, a growing number of Christian thinkers who are neither Catholic nor Eastern Orthodox (another branch of faith to which Mary is central) have concluded that their various traditions have shortchanged her in the very arena in which Protestantism most prides itself: the careful and full reading of Scripture.

Arguments on the Virgin's behalf have appeared in a flurry of scholarly essays and popular articles, on the covers of the usually conservative Christianity Today (headline: THE BLESSED EVANGELICAL MARY) and the usually liberal Christian Century (ST. MARY FOR PROTESTANTS). They are being preached, if not yet in many churches then in a denominational cross section--and not just at modest addresses like Maguire's in Xenia but also from mighty pulpits like that at Chicago's Fourth Presbyterian Church, where longtime senior pastor John Buchanan recently delivered a major message on the Virgin ending with the words "Hail Mary ... Blessed are you among us all."...

The movement is not yet prevalent in the pews. And it has its critics. While granting that Mary shows up more in the New Testament than some churches recognize, Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Southern Seminary, charges that those who use her full record to justify new "theological constructions" around her are guilty of "overreaching," "wishful thinking" and effectively "flirting with Catholic devotion." Yet Lutheran theologian Carl Braaten, co-editor of an essay collection on what might be called Marian upgrade, claims, "We don't have to go back to Catholicism. We can go back to our own roots and sources. It could be done without shocking the congregation. I can't predict how exactly it will happen. Some of it will be good, and some of it may be bad. But I think it's going to happen."

What is the urgency, other than financial, to end Terri's life, especially when her parents have expressed a desire that she be kept alive and have agreed to care for and assume guardianship over her? Do you really believe that Terri's parents would insist on keeping her alive if they believed she were miserable and didn't want to go on living?

Were you aware that some believe that suspicious circumstances surround Terri's injuries and that discrepancies exist concerning her medical condition, such as whether she suffered a heart attack?

Did you know that not long ago the Florida Department of Children and Families sought the court's permission to intervene in Terri's case for the purpose of requesting a delay to give it time to investigate abuse allegations?

From what I've read, while Terri is severely disabled, she's not in a so-called vegetative state, she's not in a coma, and she's not medically terminal -- except by court decree of starvation. What if, as Terri's parents believe, Terri truly does want to go on living but just can't verbally express it? Would it be ethical in that event to starve her just because she can't feed herself?...

I find it haunting that we live in a culture of death where the presumption seems to be against finding that a human being would want to go on living and the burden of proof is on those promoting life.

The proposals typically stop short of overturning evolution or introducing biblical accounts. Instead, they are calculated pleas to teach what advocates consider gaps in long-accepted Darwinian theory, with many relying on the idea of intelligent design, which posits the central role of a creator.

The growing trend has alarmed scientists and educators who consider it a masked effort to replace science with theology. But 80 years after the Scopes "monkey" trial -- in which a Tennessee man was prosecuted for violating state law by teaching evolution -- it is the anti-evolutionary scientists and Christian activists who say they are the ones being persecuted, by a liberal establishment.

What is underway here is not simply a tweaking of legal terminology. The crusade for same-sex marriage has never been aimed merely at adjusting the familiar boundaries of married life to make it more inclusive. The real target is the significance of marriage itself -- the idea, fundamental to human happiness and all successful societies, that the purpose of marriage is to bring men and women together for their mutual welfare and for the protection and well-being of any children they create or adopt. It is that deeply ingrained belief that the marriage radicals are determined to do away with. One purpose of the official marriage Newspeak is to make such thoughts increasingly unthinkable.

Already it is becoming hazardous to speak of marriage as an opposite-sex institution or to suggest that one of its core functions is to provide children with fathers and mothers. Just ask actress Jada Pinkett Smith or Governor Romney.

A judge ruled Monday that California can no longer justify limiting marriage to a man and a woman, a legal milestone that if upheld on appeal would pave the way for the nation’s most populous state to follow Massachusetts in allowing same-sex couples to wed.

In an opinion that had been awaited because of San Francisco’s historical role as a gay rights battleground, San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer said that withholding marriage licenses from gays and lesbians is unconstitutional.

"It appears that no rational purpose exists for limiting marriage in this state to opposite-sex partners," Kramer wrote.

If Terri's feeding tube is removed and she dies, it will be a permanent stain on the honor of this country and our system of law. It is a fact that we deliberately, legally, kill unborn children for reasons that have nothing to do with the child or its condition.

With the case of Terri Schiavo, the door to legally eliminating "the imperfect" among us has been opened. If Terri dies -- as the Florida court is ordering, as her husband-in-name-only demands, as his euthanasia-supporter attorney argues -- there isn't one of us who will ever be safe from the system.

It will set legal precedent making it possible and legally permissible for any medical personnel, any hospital or other institution, any lawyer, judge or lawmaker to decide it's time for us to die.

The press release about the offer mentions twice that the businessman who's putting up the money, Robert Herring Sr., is doing so because he wants to see Terri benefit from stem-cell research. "I believe very strongly that there are medical advances happening around the globe that very shortly could have a positive impact on Terri's condition," he said. "I have seen miraculous recoveries occur through the use of stem cells in patients suffering a variety of conditions."

Herring does not specify whether he means adult stem cells or embryonic ones. There is little doubt in my mind that his neglecting to distinguish between the two types demonstrates that he does not particularly care.

Presidents come and go. And when this president goes, the next president could, and probably will, reverse the Bush policy and allow federal funding for stem cells derived from newly discarded embryos. I would applaud that. But I deplore the step that proponents of such research are already demanding: research cloning, i.e., creating special embryos entirely for the purpose of using them for their parts.

This is crossing a critical moral red line. We may honorably disagree about the moral dignity due a tiny human embryo. But we must establish some barrier to the most wanton, reckless and hubristic exploitation of the human embryo for our own purposes.

The line is easy to find: You do not create a human embryo to be a means to some other end. Most people with a moral sense, as demonstrated by the spontaneous response to the State of the Union declaration, understand immediately that there is something fundamentally different, fundamentally corrupting, fundamentally dangerous about allowing -- indeed, encouraging -- the manufacture of human embryos for the purpose of their dissection and use for parts.

There was a time when "fear of God" meant piety, or at least conscience. Today, it more accurately describes the worldview of secular liberals who get itchy and twitchy at any reminder of our religious roots as a nation.

Thus, we are currently treated to the spectacle of the American Civil Liberties Union dragging the state of Texas into court for the offense of displaying the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the state capitol in Austin. The U.S. Supreme Court will decide in June whether a display of the Decalogue violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment....

The real point is that we've lost our grip on any common-sense definition of establishment. The Founders did not want to favor one church over another at the federal level (when the Constitution was ratified, several states did have established churches). By forbidding one national church pre-eminence, freedom of worship would be more reliably protected. The notion that this country, founded firmly in the Judeo-Christian tradition, could not even mention God in public without fearing a subpoena is simply ludicrous.

Yes, it's now legal in the Netherlands for doctors to kill severely disabled newborn babies. Or actually, it's not legal -- at least not officially. On the books, it's still called murder....The purpose of the Groningen Protocol, with its vague definitions and nonexistent patient protections, obviously has nothing to do with safeguarding against the improper administration of euthanasia and everything to do with making absolutely certain that no Dutch doctor will ever have to undergo unpleasant "interrogations by police" for suspected murder over killing a newborn infant. Involuntary euthanasia of adults who cannot fend for themselves is already widespread in the Netherlands, thanks to apparent public tolerance of the practice, and with the Groningen Protocol in place, babies born with birth defects are on the list, too.

Verhagen and Sauer justify the Groningen Protocol with the observation that infant-euthanasia is already widely practiced -- but unreported -- in the Netherlands anyway, so why not bring about some "legal control" over the process with the reports?

That's like saying -- actually it is saying -- that it's all right to break the law as long as you file some soul-searching papers about why you committed the crime.

But alas, at least so far, the Dutch don't seem to care.

Comprehensive sex education, which explains the risks of unprotected sex and explains various methods of avoiding pregnancy and disease, is a far more realistic approach in high school. Romney supports comprehensive sex education but wants a specific emphasis on abstinence, according to a spokeswoman. But state and federal funds for comprehensive programs have been cut while abstinence-only money has increased. Rather than further restricting the use of federal grants, Massachusetts ought to be requiring comprehensive sex education, with parental approval, in the schools. Anything less shortchanges reality and the health of the state's young people.

We've built a world that bombards our children with sex. Advertisements, television, magazines, movies, the Internet, and the increasingly mainstream multibillion-dollar porn industry saturate them with the message that great and frequent sex is key to status and satisfaction and that all things sexual are possible -- indeed, expectable....There is a legitimate hierarchy in adult-child relationships. As grownups we need to exercise our authority in order to create a more buffered environment in which our children can find, at their own pace, sexual selves that possess the capacity for the kind of liveliness, meaning, and connection that can occur with real and respected partners. But if we are to succeed, we'll have to do more than dispense a few do's and don't's regarding our children's behavior. We'll have to undertake an honest reexamination of the very attitudes for which our generation was once so self-congratulatory.