In an article written last year, Political Flip-Floppers & Moral Clodhoppers, I decried Senator Bill Frist’s flip-flop on the issue of stem-cell research. Talking out of both corners of his mouth at the same time, Senator Frist attempted to convince us that he is a pro-life advocate of embryonic stem-cell research, which is the equivalent of being a pro-Pledge of Allegiance flag burner. Anyone believing the good senator to be such an oxymoron is guilty of being the same minus the “oxy”; in other words, they’re just a moron.

You either believe in the sanctity of all human life or you don’t. You can’t pick and choose which human lives are sacred and which are expendable. Once you start doing so, you’re having the mother of all identity crisis; namely, confusing yourself with God. If all human life is sacred then all human life must be protected from conception to the grave. No one but God should determine if and when we are born and how and when we die. Once we take it upon ourselves to determine who is allowed to be born and when someone ought to die we’ve stepped across the line onto a slippery slope that leaves us slipping and sliding into moral morass.

Last week President Bush pulled out his veto pen for the first time in his presidency. He did so to veto legislation to expand federally supported embryonic stem cell research. Surrounded by babies and toddlers who began life as frozen embryos, Bush defended his veto by saying, “I felt like crossing this line would be a mistake, and once crossed we would find it almost impossible to turn back.” Although Bush, to his credit, understands the dire consequences this country will suffer once this line is crossed, the country itself appears to be amassing at this line in preparation of crossing it. Recent polls show that 70 percent of the American public support embryonic stem cell research, as does the vast majority of America’s poll-driven politicians—almost half of all Republicans and two-thirds of all Democrats and Independents.

While calling this issue “a profound moral issue” and asking the question as to “whether or not it is morally right to use the taxpayer dollars of millions of pro-life Americans” to fund something that they “find…morally objectionable,” Representative Mike Pence of Indiana concedes that pro-lifers are “losing the argument with the American people.” As a result, many Republican politicians are mixing the black-and-white of their former sanctity of life convictions into a compromising gray in order join Senator Frist in talking out of both sides of their mouth while claiming to stand tall on both sides of the issue.

A good example of the Republican Party’s conviction compromising paragons of virtue is Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon. Senator Smith candidly explained his party’s political realities in a recent interview. According to him, the only Republican “candidates who have a shot at winning [elections] are [those] in favor of stem cell research.” Thus, Senator Smith predicted to “know where [Republicans] are going, and it’s where the American people want to go.” Attaboy Senator Smith, follow the polls and forget about your principles; after all, the election of Republicans to political office is far more important than stopping the destruction of human embryos for spare body parts.

With staunch abortion opponents like Oregon’s Senators Gordon Smith and Orrin Hatch coming out in favor of taxpayer funded stem cell research, and with Republican presidential hopefuls like Senators Bill Frist and John McCain pitching principle to the wind in order to pander to the public in hopes of furthering their presidential aspirations, it appears that Representative Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois, is right in predicting, “He [Bush] will be leaving office, and we will still be here, and we will make sure the next president advances biomedical research.”

I don’t know about you, but I find it interesting that no one is waving the red flags of separation of church and state over the increasing possibility of my tax dollars being used for something that my religious faith finds morally reprehensible. I guess the government can force me to pay taxes to fund something that violates my Christian convictions, but I can’t speak out against it for fear of jeopardizing my ministry’s or church’s tax exemption. It seems to me that today’s much touted wall of separation between church and state is one-sided; it only prevents the church from having a voice in government, but not the government from forcing Christians to fund what their faith finds contemptible.

Along with Bible-believing Christians, it appears that the only other group happy about President Bush’s veto of legislation to expand federally funded embryonic stem cell research is the Democratic Party. In hopes of making hay with this issue, Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, sent out a fund-raising letter within hours of Bush’s veto accusing the president of “catering to his right-wing base,” instead of caring about curing peoples’ diseases. Reid promises that before this fall’s elections he and his fellow-Democrats are “going to do everything [they] can to let the American people know that what President Bush has done is wrong.”

Leave it to the Democrats to demonize a president over his protection of the unborn. The Democratic Party, recently and rightfully dubbed by National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru as “The Party of Death,” has never hesitated to try to capitalize politically on the carcasses of aborted babies or Terri Schiavos, so why should it balk now at trying to improve its chances at the polls at the expense of destroyed human embryos? Obviously, it won’t; and our country will continue down its slippery slope. Unfortunately, we can’t slip much further before hitting moral rock bottom.