Groups like Catholics for Free Choice <http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/> and (pro-gay) Evangelicals Concerned <http://www.ecwr.org/> are religious *leftists* who founded their own secular NGOs -- they are far from "religious moderates" in the views of the faithfuls of their own respective faith traditions as well as the secular. Such groups get much support from secular women's rights groups, secular GLBT rights groups, and so on, as well as liberal philanthropists and foundations. In order for their view to reverberate and affect the national discourse, however, they need to get more support from Catholics, evangelicals, and other believers in the respective faith traditions to which they belong (the claim hotly contested by conservatives in their own faith traditions, not by atheists or agnostics) and eventually exercise power in them at the highest level (as leftists in the Presbyterian Church already do -- e.g., the PCUSA's moderator now is Rick Ufford-Chase <http://www.rickuffordchase.com/>).
>To start with, so long as they keep quiet, both sides treat them
>like their friends. As soon as they stick their head above the
>parapet, they'll get fired at from both sides.
>
>No rational person would mount an attack from that position. Only a
>zealot -- which is exactly what they aren't.
I'd say that Catholics for Free Choice is a fairly militant and zealous group. They protest against the Vatican Embassy squaring off against anti-abortion activists ("About 150 members of Catholics for a Free Choice protested peacefully with about 50 members of a group that opposes legal abortion, the American Life League's Crusade for the Defense of Our Catholic Church" <http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/04/24/abortion.protest/>), work with secular pro-women activists on clinic defense, and is now engaged in "a campaign to change the status of the Roman Catholic church at the United Nations" from Non-member State Permanent Observer to a non-governmental organization (which is further than many secular leftists would go). You would never find any secular leftists firing shots against Catholics for Free Choice and other groups like that. Their enemies are rightists, religious or secular. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Monthly Review: <http://monthlyreview.org/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>