The New York Times has the article up under a different title: “Ban on Most Abortions Advances in South Dakota”

The ban actually goes further than either title suggests. The law, which is expected to pass, will outlaw all abortions except to protect the life of the mother. That means no abortion if the pregnancy is only going to cripple the mother. No abortions for rape victims. No abortions for incest victims. No abortions during the first 40 or 50 days when even the Vatican doesn’t believe a soul yet exists.

Welcome to the new Republican World Order, where a clump of cells has more rights than an adult woman.

This is just too rich. The NY Times has an article out called March of the Conservatives: Penguin Film as Political Fodder that has such excellent bits as:

On the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com, an opponent of abortion wrote that the movie “verified the beauty of life and the rightness of protecting it…”

…At a conference for young Republicans, the editor of National Review urged participants to see the movie because it promoted monogamy…

“…March of the Penguins,” the conservative film critic and radio host Michael Medved said in an interview, is “the motion picture this summer that most passionately affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing.”

Why is it amusing that conservative groups are adopting a movie about penguins for their causes? Because penguins are one of the species that proves homosexuality is not a choice. Penguins do mate for life, some of them with the same sex. I’m willing to bet that in the neoconservative echo chamber, most of them aren’t aware of that fact.

The same San Francisco Chronicle article also points out that Bonobo apes, which are closely related to humans, are almost all bisexual, with females engaging “in homosexual activity almost hourly.” (As a heterosexual man I’m going to steadfastly not comment about how great it would be if human women behaved more like Bonobo apes because that would be wrong of me. Very, very wrong. I won’t do it, I tell you.)

It goes on to point out some 450 species have been observed to homosexual behaviors, many of them mammals. I’m sure they all chose to be gay though.

Another in a series of “framing the conversation.”

Evolution is real. It is concrete. It stands on millions of fossils that all fall into place perfectly with one another, none of them out of place, nothing contradicting the theory. Referring to it as a theory is like referring to the “theory of gravity” as just a theory. Last time I looked out the window, the neighbors weren’t floating over their porches.

The whole idea of teaching “intelligent design” (ID) in our biology classes is anathema to me, but many people think it’s a good idea. There are probably a couple of reasons for that: a large part of the population is religious, another large part of the population has a distrust of science (or anything they don’t understand–I don’t understand what’s under the hood of my car, and I’m notoriously distrustful of it and mechanics), and because the right-wing pundits have done an excellent job of framing the discussion.

The big thing here is that the people pushing ID are really pushing creationism, which was already outlawed in our schools by the Supreme Court under the whole separation of church and state principle. They claim they’re not, but they are. They claim that the complexity of living things is such that they had to have a Creator, err, creator.

Religion is defined as “belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.” Simply put, the belief that someone or something created us is a religious belief. Having that belief is fine. The vast majority of people believe that. It can and should be taught in theology classes and in Sunday school classes at whatever church people want to attend. But not in science classes.

Science is based on testable evidence. As I said, there are millions of fossils supporting evolution, and not one contradicting it. There is no controversy here (the ID movement loves the phrase “teach the controversy”). So let’s frame the conversation in such a way as to make these points more obvious.

Whenever someone brings up the topic of ID, I propose specifically referring to it as creationism in your response. When they balk at that, and they will, you’ll have changed the conversation from “teach the controvery” to “defend the idea that ID is not creationism.” They have to argue that it isn’t creationism because that is already banned from schools. If they don’t argue it, you can point out their implicit acknowledgement that creationism and ID are the same thing.

This is great. Because now you can spend the entire time arguing over whether or not ID is creationism and you’ll have the high ground in the argument. The debate never has to progress to the point of discussing whether creationism (remember, it’s not ID) should be taught in schools.

It’s also a good idea to attack the idea of what they are trying to do. They are attacking scientific principles and the teaching of science. It’s important to frame it that way as opposed to “they are trying to teach/push religion in schools” since the vast majority of people are religious and many of them support the notion of teaching science in schools. As I said above, it’s okay to teach religion in a theology class in a public school. That’s not what this is about.

A question such as “why are you attacking science?” is good. It isn’t inflammatory, and it is a legitimate question that allows follow-up questions of the scientific principles of creationism, for which there are none.

What if scientists had the ability to take an ape embryo and flip all the genetic markers necessary to make it human? Insert a little DNA here, snip a little out over there. It would open up any number of moral, ethical, legal, and religious questions.

• Is it human?
• Does it have a soul?
• Does it have the same rights as (other) humans?
• Is it an ‘it’ or a ‘he or she’?
• If creating life is precious and good, would religious people have to acknowledge that scientists had done a good thing?

Religion has always been at war with science because science has always had the power to damage religion. Scientists continue to say that science and religion can co-exist and, up until now, I agreed. I’m not so sure anymore. Science is fast reaching a point where it will be asking questions that I don’t think religion is prepared to answer.

I do know this: science has never had a greater ability to threaten religion than it does now.

And the sudden sense of urgency in the religious attacks on science begins to make sense. How loud would you shout if you heard the death knell of your worldview?

This is the first in what will become a series of posts on framing debates, which is a necessary part of winning debates.

In this particular case, the subject is cloning stem cells, often called therapeutic cloning. Paul Berg, a professor emeritus at Stanford University, recently made the statement “We are not cloning people, we are cloning stem cells to treat patients.”

That sounds good and people on both the left and right support stem cell research, which supporters hope will lead to therapeutic cloning, but people on the far right like to use words like “murder” when referring to stem cell research. I continue to advocate not sinking to their level, however, I do think the cause of therapeutic cloning could benefit from not using the word cloning. Instead, I propose that people refer to it as “copying cells” or “duplicating cells” which are both just as accurate but without the baggage that the word cloning carries with it.

BTW, the cells in your body replicate (duplicate themselves) all the time. But when scientists do the same thing with stem cells it has the chance to save millions of lives and make better millions more.

Man, that will just floor the religious right won’t it? Can you imagine the next President saying something stupid like that intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution? Here’s the catch: the Pope made these statements back in 1996.

Here’s a good take on the battle being fought.