Doug:
> Speaking of being critical of religion - damn, won't anyone stand up
> for secularism anymore? Are American lefties so cowed by the dominant
> piety that we're afraid to say it's all a crock?
Hey why stand up for secularism when the courts will do the political dirty work for you? Most secular-minded folks stay kind of quiet because the courts are intervening against most religious right hobbyhorses-- prayer in schools, abortion, now sodomy laws. So secularists don't mobilize politically.
One of my standard arguments against judicial activism is that the immediate beneficiaries are politically demobilized, helping them in the short-term, but often encouraging a shift of the whole political terrain in the wrong direction. So we go from 1960 where a Presidential candidate swore he would not listen to the Pope's instructions on politics to 2003 when it is declared by conservatives in the Senate that any judicial nominee not following the churches instructions on abortion is unfit to serve on the bench.
-- Nathan Newman