Those American Taliban religious far-righters may be chortling about their wins on banning same-sex marriage Tuesday in California, Florida and a third state, but they suffered defeats on their other obsession, abortion, in Colorado, South Dakota and California.
The Colorado proposition, which lost 73%-27%, was particularly intriguing. It would have amended the state's constitution to give fertilized eggs, before implantation in the womb, the same legal rights and protections that apply to people once they are born. It would have been a constitutional precedent saying that life begins at conception, and therefore a slam-dunk for right-wing lawyers arguing from it in court challenges to contraception, medical research involving embryos and the very concept of fertility clinics.
But the folks that H. L. Mencken used to call the "Christers" never give up. Just as sure as they came back in South Dakota with a sweeping challenge to Roe v. Wade after losing previously, and just as sure as they came back in California with yet another parental-notification initiative after losing three times earlier, the Intolerant Right is sure to be back in Colorado and other states.
I hear that what they're planning next is an initiative saying life begins at the moment a guy propositions a woman. (They'll call it Proposition Proposition.) If that loses, the next initiative will move life's beginning to when a man unzips his fly. If that doesn't pass, they'll rewrite it to make it the moment a woman receives a text message asking for a date. If that fails, they'll successfully get thousands of signatures on a petition for a vote to establish that life begins when a man's eyes meet the eyes of a woman.
I'm telling you, these people never take no for an answer.
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., still has the best one-liner on this subject. He said: "A conservative is one who believes that life begins at conception -- and ends at birth." (Frank added: "We Jews believe that the fetus is not viable until it has graduated from medical school.")
Oh, the right-wingers care about you desperately when you're a sperm, an egg, an embryo or a fetus. But once you're born, forget it. You're on your own. Theirs would be a Darwinian philosophy -- if they believed in Darwin. When will they stop pestering the rest of us and just leave us alone?