Providing a haven for the children of nonbelievers is what Camp Quest is all about. As the camp's official T-shirt announces, it's a place that's "beyond belief." More precisely, it claims to be the first summer sleep-away camp in the country for atheist, agnostic and secular humanist children.

Nearly two million American adults openly identify themselves as atheist or agnostic, according to a 2001 survey by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. As a group, they face more than their share of bigotry, said Edwin F. Kagin, Camp Quest's longtime director, and their children are often made to feel like outcasts.

Many of the two dozen campers who attended this year's session last week recounted experiences of being called names and otherwise harassed. For instance, Travis Leepers, 17, from Louisiana, reported that just about everyone he knows has expressed concern to him about his soul and has tried to convert him.

Sophia Riehemann, 14, from Bellevue, Ky., recalled how one of her schoolmates called her a devil-worshiper. "People get really confused sometimes," Sophia said. "They think that if we don't believe in God we believe in the devil."

At Camp Quest, children age 8 to 17 take part in all the usual summer camp activities. But in addition to horseback riding, organized water balloon fights and outdoor survival lessons, the camp's volunteer staff aims to promote a healthy respect for science and rational inquiry, while assuring campers that there is nothing wrong with not believing in the Bible and not putting stock in a supreme creator.

Canada would become only the third country in the world to legalize gay marriage under landmark legislation passed in the House of Commons in spite of fierce opposition from Conservatives and religious leaders.

The bill would grant same-sex couples legal rights equal to those in traditional unions between a man and a woman, something already legal in a majority of Canadian provinces. The legislation drafted by Prime Minister Paul Martin's minority Liberal Party government was also expected to easily pass the Senate and become federal law by the end of July.

The reason the Supreme Court has issued so many conflicting and confusing rulings on this and other subjects is that it has abandoned the Constitution as its only standard in favor of making law to suit its own purposes.

In this, the justices resemble violators of one or more of the Ten Commandments (and that includes us all): turning away from things that are designed to preserve, protect and defend us and ruling only as they see fit (see Judges 21:25).

The court ignores the First Amendment, which prohibits Congress, not the states, from "establishing" religion. By restricting what may be displayed on public property, the Court also damages the "free exercise" clause. It erects a "no trespassing" sign for people who believe in God and wish to say so on public property, which is paid for by citizens of many and no religious persuasions....

While critics of these mostly anti-religious rulings are right in scolding the court for its misinterpretation of the Constitution, are such persons also in violation of the will of the very God they claim to represent? Why, in fact, do such people feel the need for public displays representing what they believe? Isn't this a kind of false security, similar to airport security screeners?

If one consolation emerges from this ruling, it's the fact that the majority declined to rule more broadly about the display of religious symbols in public spaces, limiting itself only to the display of the Ten Commandments inside courthouses. But insofar as this ruling stands as an attempt to scrub religion from public life, it serves as a reminder that Mr. Bush has hard work ahead of him in the search for the right judges for the nation's courts.

The generation that wrote and ratified the First Amendment obviously thought that none of these practices...violated the Establishment Clause. So why is today's court preoccupied with the supposed problem of mere displays of the Commandments? Because beginning about 25 years ago the court evidently decided that the Establishment Clause's historical context, and the Framers' intentions regarding it, are irrelevant....But this is a merely prudential, not a constitutional consideration. On Monday the justices churned out 140 pages of opinions and dissents about the Texas and Kentucky displays. Here is a one-sentence opinion that should suffice in such cases: "Because the display on public grounds does not do what the Establishment Clause was written to prevent -- does not impose a state-sponsored creed or significantly advantage or disadvantage one sect or sects -- the display is constitutional."

For decades, "big science" -- indeed any kind of science -- has been led by the United States. There are warning signs, however, that American science is losing its edge, and may even have peaked. One reason is that as religious and political fundamentalism tighten their grip, they are beginning to sap America's intellectual vitality.

By contrast, the political turmoil that has broken out on the other side of the Atlantic shows that Europeans grasp how destructive fundamentalism can be....As a result of fundamentalist opposition, America is already falling behind in cloning and stem cell research, now led by South Korean, Italian and British scientists. In February the New Scientist reported a survey in which fully half the scientists working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said they had been pushed to alter or withdraw scientific findings for political reasons....Yet history shows that fundamentalism leads only to stagnation and disaster.

Marriage has never been easy. Sexual liberation has taken its toll. The Pill promoted promiscuity and reduced birth rates, and illegitimacy continues to hit poor young women hardest. Divorce is sometimes regarded as merely a form of human recycling, but new research suggests that divorce is bad for your health, which ought to get some couples to try harder to stay together. Increasing numbers of young men and women are going into couple therapy before they get married; children of divorce don't want their children to go through what they did.

Through thick and thin (or even thin and thin), for better and for worse, marriage as an institution continues to define public norms that shape public attitudes and personal expectations. We ought to keep it that way. Philosophers from John Locke to John Rawls emphasize the importance of conjugal marriage for democratic society, and most of us understand that children do best with a mother and a father. So before we start tampering with our respect for traditional marriage, we should pay heed to what we know that works. If we don't want to do that for our selfish selves, we must do it for the sake of the children.

George W. Bush is not Lord. The Declaration of Independence is not an infallible guide to Christian faith and practice. Nor is the U.S. Constitution, nor the U.N. Universal Declaration on Human Rights. "Original intent" of America's founders is not the hermeneutical key that will guarantee national righteousness. The American flag is not the Cross. The Pledge of Allegiance is not the Creed. "God Bless America" is not the Doxology....

In the heat of partisan politics (out of which many of these overstatements and misunderstandings arise), we are tempted to forget that the most potent political act--the one act that deeply manifests and really empowers a "kind and noble society"--is the worship of Jesus Christ.

In worship we signal who is the Sovereign, not of just this nation, but of heaven and Earth. In worship we gather to be formed into an alternate polis, the people of God. It is here that we proclaim that a new political order--the kingdom of heaven—has been preached and incarnated by the King of Kings, and will someday come in fullness, a fullness to which all kingdoms and republics will submit....Let us be clear: The Christian citizen of every nation has a moral obligation to engage at some level in that nation's political life. We do not recommend withdrawal from the political arena. We admire especially those whose calling falls in this area--mayors, councilmen, senators, representatives, presidents. Theirs is as noble a calling as that of a plumber or pastor.

But Christians who enter that calling, and those who pray for and work with them, must not forget one thing: where hope for this nation, and the world, really lies, and where that hope is most manifest Sunday by Sunday.

Jesus said he came to bring a sword. A sword divides. The primary objective for the Christian should be to seek and to point others toward Jesus, not to political parties and agendas.

The social ills confronting us have not produced our collective indifference to a moral code. They reflect that indifference. Fixing social ills does not begin in the halls of Congress or Supreme Court, but in individual human hearts.

Government can't go there. God can. But if God's servants prefer government to God, or seek to attach God to political parties and earthly agendas, they are doomed to futility.

Mr. Danforth notes Jesus sat with "tax collectors and sinners" and sees these acts as part of Jesus' "tolerance" and inclusiveness. But his purpose was not to justify their often corrupt tax-collecting practices and other sins. It was to lead them to repentance and faith in himself. He told the woman taken in adultery that while he did not condemn her, she was to "go and sin no more." To a moderate, I guess that was intolerant.

These concerns were never raised when religious moderates and liberals had the public square to themselves. They're upset because they have been marginalized. Still, Mr. Danforth is right about where true power to change people comes from, and it isn't from the state.

Mr. Bush does not deny the greater potential of embryonic stem cells: he says his decision was compelled by his belief that retrieving stem cells from the embryo destroys it, thereby resulting in the killing of a human being that cannot be justified no matter how vast the potential benefits.

The president did not claim his conclusion was based on biomedical science....No doubt the president's belief that human life begins with fertilization is shared by millions of Americans, including many Christians and evangelists. But it remains a minority view and one that the president applies inconsistently. Although Mr. Bush believes that destroying an embryo is murder, he refuses to demand legislation to stop commercial interests that are busily destroying embryos in order to obtain stem cells. If their conduct amounts to murder as the president contends, it is hardly satisfactory for him to say he will do nothing to stop the evil act other than to refuse to pay for it.

However well the president has negotiated the political shoals, he has produced a moral and intellectual mishmash that has failed to dissuade Congress from going further than he has in advancing stem cell research.

To extricate himself from an untenable position, the president should start by following the successful pattern established in other areas of dealing with the clash of religious and political questions, including the law concerning abortion. The right of true believers to live by their own religious beliefs will be guaranteed: no one will be compelled to use stem cell research or its products, just as no one will ever be compelled to have an abortion. And the nation will respect the right of believers to advocate for changes in our civil law that correspond with their own view of morality.

Ruling in a suit by two gay men who were denied a marriage license in Orange County, U.S. District Judge Gary Taylor said the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act promotes "the stability and legitimacy of what may reasonably be viewed as the optimal union for procreating and rearing children by both biological parents.''

Taylor declined the couple's request to rule on the constitutionality of California's law, which -- like laws in effect in every state except Massachusetts -- allows only opposite-sex couples to marry. He noted that a San Francisco judge's ruling in March, which found that the law violates the rights of gays and lesbians to marry the partner of their choice, was based entirely on the California Constitution. That ruling is on hold during the state's appeal.

But the significance of Taylor's decision is that it was only the third in the nation to address the validity of the Defense of Marriage Act, and the only one headed for appeal to higher courts. Rulings in Washington state and Florida, upholding other aspects of the law, have not been appealed.

The documentary followed Knox for five years and details her transition from being a young teen who once pledged to be abstinent until marriage to an activist for comprehensive sex education in the schools....

Knox is there with her parents. Music plays and the audience is shown worshiping. Parents and teens hold hands. Ainsworth explains they are going to commit to purity before God, their parents, to their future husband or wife and the world.

The Knox family has formed a circle and Shelby slips a silver ring on her finger as a symbol of her commitment to abstinence.

"I will hold you to this commitment," her dad says in an encouraging tone.

The film's title would suggest that at this point in her life she is the "uneducated" Shelby Knox, because later in her teen years we find Knox commenting about pregnancy at her school. The halls are filled with young students carrying books and one obviously pregnant girl is spotted chatting with a teacher....The film shows how Shelby takes up fight against abstinence-until-marriage education. She becomes part of a city-wide youth commission, a group of activist students, but even they are unwilling to take the cause to the level she desires. So she aligns herself with a gay-straight club seeking access to a Lubbock high school, but those results also disappoint her.

About the main arguments against killing Terri Schiavo, the autopsy had nothing to say. Many people believed that it is wrong deliberately to bring about the death of innocent human beings, whatever their condition; that it is especially wrong when there is doubt about what that person wanted, and when her family members are willing to provide care for her; that Mr. Schiavo was too compromised to make this decision; that a law enabling the killing of people in a "persistent vegetative state" should not be stretched to cover people who might be "minimally conscious"; and that the Supreme Court should not have established the current lax standards for denying incapacitated people food and water. Nobody who believed these things has any reason to change his mind based on this week's evidence.

"Terri Schiavo's autopsy results confirm what was feared -- she was disabled, and her death was due to the deliberate denial of hydration," said Wendy Wright, CWA's senior policy director. "The autopsy report described Terri's medical history and condition in detail, but the cold reality of the truth is that her cause of death was 'dehydration.' Terri Schiavo died because the court ordered the removal of the instrument that provided her water.

"There is no medical condition or disability that should ever be championed as a justifiable reason to deny water to a human being. Every human life has worth and a purpose apart from its 'merit' to society that must be vigorously defended and upheld, not crushed."

"While people may personally dread becoming handicapped, people with disabilities deserve mercy, not malice. Only a calloused society in moral freefall would deny a disabled person her most basic need -- water," said Wright.

After a year in which religion played a polarizing role in U.S. politics, many religious leaders are eager to demonstrate that faith can be a uniter, not just a divider. The buzzwords today in pulpits and seminaries are crossover, convergence, common cause and shared values.

Last week in Washington, representatives of more than 40 U.S. denominations took part in the Convocation on Hunger at the National Cathedral, where they sang a Tanzanian hymn while the choir director shook a gourd full of seeds and children laid breads from around the world on the altar.

It may have been mistaken for a hippie ceremony were it not for the sight of clergy from the Southern Baptist Convention, Assemblies of God and other evangelical churches praying alongside Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, mainline Protestants and Jews.

The show of solidarity was partly a reaction against "the recent manipulation of religion in ways that are divisive and partisan," said David Beckmann, a Lutheran minister and president of Bread for the World, a nonprofit group that helped organize the service.

"Because religion has been dragged into political life in some ways, this is the religious leadership of the nation saying, 'No, let us show you what religion in the public square should really be about,'" he said.

A.D., of course, stands for "anno Domini," or "in the year of the Lord," to which some reply, "He isn't my lord," or "I don't know, but I suppose someone could be offended." No one's paid this much attention to Latin phrases since the William F. Buckley Fan Club threw a three-day rave.

So high school teachers are doing what professors have done for years, using C.E., for "common era," and B.C.E. for what came before. The AP reports the trend has reached Advanced Placement tests and many textbooks....

Calendars that imply it's nominally 2005 years since Jesus was born hang in both the Bible Belt and the Freedom from Religion Foundation; those calendars account for none of the divergence in belief. "Anno Domini" doesn't grant the church dominion any more than using the name "Thursday" implies devotion to Thor.

"We joke about it," says Christine Stone, a woman who takes Thor quite seriously. But she says she and others in the Wolfmoon Kindred, a Wisconsin group that follows old Germanic religious practices - she calls herself a heathen - do not see it as a big hug from mainstream culture simply because their gods' names are attached to days of the week.

So, too, with A.D.: It's not a prayer, but it is a marker of where we came from, not lightly tossed aside.

One needn't agree personally that Jesus' life was important enough to serve as a pivot for history. But it has been seen so by enough people for enough years that it's part of the bedrock under Western culture's topography.

Last month, the Supreme Court upheld a 2000 federal law that requires prisons to make exceptions to rules that conflict with the religious practices of inmates....The law at issue in Cutter applies in only two areas: land-use regulation and prisons. But the political momentum in favor of expanded religious accommodation has broader implications. For the last 15 years, there has been a periodic tug of war between Congress and the courts over the definition of religious freedom. Now the battle over religious accommodation is moving to the sphere of private employment. The Workplace Religious Freedom Act of 2005, introduced in the Senate this spring, has an odd constellation of supporters and opponents. Its sponsors include Pennsylvania Sen. Richard Santorum, a religious conservative, and Massachusetts liberal John Kerry. In what must be a sign of the end of days, Hillary Clinton has found common cause with Orrin Hatch in support of WRFA. On the other side, civil rights activists, including the ACLU and the National Women's Law Center, have joined with businesses in opposition.

Employment discrimination on the basis of religion has violated federal law for 30 years. But reasonable people can and do differ as to what qualifies as discrimination. The easiest cases are intentional. Most employers, however, aren't dumb enough to announce their illegal intentions ("Let's forbid head coverings so we can get rid of all the Sikhs and Muslims"), so it can be hard to prove intentional discrimination. Instead, many cases involve rules that don't target religion but incidentally penalize religious practice. A dress code that forbids headwear screens out the Sikh's turban and the Muslim's headscarf, along with the cowboy's Stetson and the beatnik's beret. A requirement that employees work on Saturdays cuts into the social life of all employees and into the religious life of observant Jews and Seventh Day Adventists. A rule that employees refrain from non-work-related conversations with customers penalizes the chatty and the Evangelical Protestant whose beliefs require her to spread the Gospel.

Since it's not a secret that Warren is an evangelical Christian with strong ties to the conservative Christian community -- including a prior business relationship with Focus on the Family leader James Dobson -- I suspected that his views on social issues came straight from the Christian right, and the longer the company dodged my calls the more skeptical I got.

Eharmony, it turned out, had been equally skeptical of me. "Salon, I think, is known for being harsh," Warren said. "I wouldn't want you to make me sound bad because, for instance, I believe in God or I pray."

It's an issue Warren is sensitive about, especially right now, as he makes a break from Dobson's ministry. In late May, after Warren began to publicly distance himself from Focus on the Family, Dobson announced a formal separation of sorts on his radio program. It's a significant split; the conservative, evangelical community nourished Warren's nascent business, and now he appears to be leaving it behind for the secular world. Part of his reluctance to talk to a reporter whom he guessed would press him on religious and social issues may well have had to do with the delicacy of his situation. Is he a moral man who has begun to question the narrowness of the Christian right, especially their position on gays? Or is he a savvy opportunist looking for a bigger market share? And if it means that he is opening himself up to a more nuanced and accepting worldview, does it really matter?

"Where Focus on the Family and a lot of these other places come from is that there are six places in the Bible that say homosexuality is wrong," he said. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. But then he continued: "On the other hand, in the Old Testament if you work on the Sabbath day and you're guilty then you should be shot."

I was surprised to hear him play out his internal debate so openly. Sure, he remained fairly benighted on issues of homosexuality, but I had to acknowledge he's from a different time and culture. I wish that I'd been able to have a conversation this frank with my late grandfather, who was not exactly open to sexual, religious or racial differences -- and whom I loved very much. How could I not appreciate the fact that Warren was at least engaging the topic?

Most women in Eugene, Ore.--or any city, for that matter--have no interest in sharing public restrooms with men. But if the city council approves a new ordinance backed by the local Human Rights Commission (HRC), the women of Eugene will be asked to do just that.

The city's current Human Rights Ordinance bars discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, national origin, ethnicity, marital status, familial status, age, sexual orientation, or source of income. The new ordinance would add "gender identity" to that list of personal traits–a provision that would allow bathroom choice based on psychological self-appraisal: Do I feel like a man or a woman?...

The HRC will hear from detractors in a public forum on June 21, but barring any unforeseen surprises will move its ordinance proposal into the city council for a vote this fall. Unlike former Eugene mayor Jim Torrey, who threatened to veto such a package three years ago, current mayor Kitty Piercy accepts the notion of gender identity as legitimate.

Is an embryo, as Bush says, a "real human life"?

It's not an easy question to answer. Indeed, whether or not embryos are human beings has been one of the most contentious debates in bioethics during the past decade -- and in the end the decision would seem to be a highly personal, moral choice....

Does Bush's position on stem cell research reflect strongly held personal beliefs?

Well, we have no way of knowing what Bush actually believes. It certainly is possible that he really thinks of embryos as deserving the same moral consideration as the rest of us.

The problem, though, is that Bush's position is intellectually and morally inconsistent. If Bush really thinks embryos are human beings, you'd think he would insist on protecting them in all circumstances. But he's not. And it would appear that the reason he's not is because if he did, the public wouldn't stand for it and he and the GOP would pay a steep political price.

Left-wingers have come to rely on the divide-and-conquer tactic, and the embryonic stem-cell lobby doesn't miss an opportunity to use it with regard to Bush's position. These relativists are hoping that conservatives will be so stung by the moral relation between the embryo issues--stem cells and IVF--that they will become paralyzed, unable to support Bush on one while disagreeing on another.

Zoo employees, religious leaders and others spoke in opposition, saying religion shouldn't be part of the taxpayer-funded scientific institution.

But those who favored the creationist exhibit, including Mayor Bill LaFortune, argued that the zoo already displayed religious items, including the statue of the Hindu god, Ganesh, outside the elephant exhibit and a marble globe inscribed with an American Indian saying, "The earth is our mother. The sky is our father."

"I see this as a big victory," said Dan Hicks, the Tulsa resident who approached the Tulsa Zoo with the idea for the exhibit. "It's a matter of fairness. To not include the creationist view would be discrimination."

Hundreds of people had signed a petition supporting a biblically based creation exhibit.

The new display will include a disclaimer that says it represents one view of origins. City attorneys also advised it be placed alongside other cultures' views of creation.

Unlike a much-discussed Nebraska bill that would have prohibited a number of abortion procedures, this Virginia law focused narrowly on protecting the infant itself as it is being delivered. It allowed several procedures that the Nebraska law would have banned and made an exception for cases where the mother's life is at risk. None of that stopped the court from ruling that the law's clause to protect the life of mothers was inadequate.

The "infanticide" claim doesn't originate with us; it comes from Judge Paul V. Niemeyer, one of the three justices who sits on the court. In his 27-page dissent, Judge Neimeyer calls the ruling "a bold, new law that, in essence, constitutionalizes infanticide of a most gruesome nature." In some uncommonly harsh words for his colleagues, Judge Niemeyer called the ruling "unfit for the laws of a people of liberty" and said it "unnecessarily distances our jurisprudence from that of the Supreme Court and from general norms of morality." To give readers a sense of the other side, Judge Niemeyer quotes the plaintiff, Dr. William Fitzhugh, describing his work. "My job on any given patient is to terminate that pregnancy, which means that I don't want a live birth."

The research is still young and largely unpublished, and in some cases it is limited to animal cells. Scientists doing the work also emphasize their desire to have continued access to human embryos for now. It is largely by analyzing how nature makes stem cells, deep inside days-old embryos, that these researchers are learning how to make the cells themselves.

Yet the gathering consensus among biologists is that embryonic stem cells are made, not born -- and that embryos are not an essential ingredient. That means that today's heated debates over embryo rights could fade in the aftermath of technical advances allowing scientists to convert ordinary cells into embryonic stem cells.

"That would really get around all the moral and ethical concerns," said James F. Battey, chief of the stem cell task force at the National Institutes of Health. The techniques under study qualify for federal grant support because embryos are not harmed, he noted. And eventually the work could boost the number of stem cell colonies, or lines, available for study by taxpayer-supported researchers.

"This long-awaited revised text of the Gospels makes the moral message of Christ more accessible to many, and more illuminating to all," says Billie Shakespeare, vice president for the publisher, in a statement. "It is empowering. We published this new Bible to acknowledge the rise of women in society."

WND sought comment from the LBI Institute's Stephen Glazier, but he did not return messages.

The new version, according to the publisher, revises familiar stories, tranforming the "Prodigal Son" into the "Prodigal Daughter" and the "Lord's Prayer" into the "Lady's Prayer."

The invitation was straightforward enough: "The Director of the National Museum of Natural History and Discovery Institute are happy to announce the national premiere and private evening reception for The Privileged Planet: The Search for Purpose in the Universe," on June 23. But for the museum's directors, the decision to allow this film to be shown in one of their auditoriums turned out not to be straightforward at all. The Museum of Natural History is known, among other things, for its collection of fossils and its displays describing Darwin's theory of evolution. The Seattle-based Discovery Institute, by contrast, is known for its efforts to undermine the teaching of Darwinism in schools and to promote the theory of "intelligent design" -- life is so complicated it must have been designed by an intelligent creator.

For these reasons, the Smithsonian and its Museum of Natural History should have been wary of this project. But the film itself also should have given them pause. The museum's policy, according to its spokesman, is to allow private groups to use its auditorium for a fee -- in this case, $16,000 -- so long as the material shown is not religious or political in content. While "The Privileged Planet" is an extremely sophisticated religious film, it is a religious film nevertheless. It uses scientific information -- the apparently "perfect" position of Earth in its orbit and in its galaxy, the uniqueness of its atmosphere -- to answer, affirmatively, the philosophical question of whether life on Earth was part of a grand design, and not just the result of chance and chemistry. Neither God nor evolution is mentioned. Nevertheless, the film is consistent with the Discovery Institute's general aim, which is to drive a wedge into the scientific consensus about the origins of life and the universe and to give a patina of scientific credibility to the idea of an intelligent creator.

Can you say "perverse"? Planned Parenthood in Indiana and Kansas is effectively fighting to protect child rapists from potential prosecution in two high-profile legal fights. That an organization devoted to the interests of women finds itself in this position is a cautionary tale of abortion-rights extremism....

Why would a feminist organization not be eager to cooperate in a fight against the sexual exploitation of young girls? Well, Planned Parenthood represents that wing of the feminist billed as "sex positive." Although that phrase doesn’t quite capture it. Planned Parenthood is developing the "statutory rape-positive" wing of feminism.

These feminists are unwilling to pass judgment on any sex in any circumstances, don’t care if parents are cut out of the equation entirely, believe the right to an abortion trumps any other consideration, and embrace a notion of privacy so sweeping it includes men who have, under law, raped their young sexual partners. If only Michael Jackson were interested in girls instead of boys, he might, in the right circumstances, have a friend in Planned Parenthood.

With that, the McClures, who are in their 40's and live in Bellevue, Wash., decided to take 13 embryos from a fertility clinic in Austin, Tex. They had a son 10 months ago and became part of an unexpected alliance that conservative Christians have been forming with the world of test-tube babies.

That alliance was on prominent display last week when, to protest a bill supporting the use of embryos for stem cell research, President Bush appeared with the McClures and 20 other Snowflakes families, kissing the babies, some of whom wore T-shirts that said "former embryo," or "this embryo was not discarded." Federal and state lawmakers have held similar appearances.

People on this part of the political spectrum have begun calling the process "embryo adoption," echoing the phrase that Snowflakes uses instead of "embryo donation." The Health and Human Services Department has termed the process embryo adoption in certain grants. Bills that would formally call it "embryo adoption" have begun to filter into statehouses in California, New Jersey and Massachusetts, states that, not coincidentally, are at the forefront of legalizing and encouraging embryonic stem cell research.

The adoption terminology irritates the fertility industry, abortion rights advocates and supporters of embryonic stem cell research, who believe that the language suggests -- erroneously, they maintain -- that an embryo has the same status as a child.

Though no formal government or industry restrictions prevent condom commercials from being shown in prime time, condom ads have traditionally been banished to late-night hours or cable networks. But television airwaves have recently become more open to products dealing with sexual health, evidenced by frequent network commercials for erectile dysfunction drugs and female contraception.

The new Trojan campaign includes four commercials focusing on sexual health statistics compiled by Trojan. The first commercial, viewable on Trojan's Web site before its television premiere, begins with a graphic explaining that 40 percent of people who know they are HIV positive do not divulge that fact to their sexual partners. All of the spots will include the message: "Other than abstinence, there is only one way to protect yourself. Use a condom every time."