There has been a lot hysterical wind blowing recently about what a raging liberal (cum socialist) Barack Obama is.

If there was ever a negation of that rhetoric it is here: Obama to sign executive order on abortion limits Wednesday. Clearly there are agenda items that are shared by both parties. One of them is the willingness to negotiate women's sovereignty over their bodies. Clearly Obama shares the religious and conservative view that a woman's body is merely a vessel in which the state has a compelling interest.

I suppose, or at the very least hope, that there will come a time when women's bodies and rights are no longer pawns on the political chess board for men to play with as they will; a time when men - who would bristle at any thought that their bodies and their personal integrity are not inviolable - will recognize in woman an identical perspective; a time when Christian religious doctrine will not trump the rights of women, regardless of their own personal religious or moral beliefs

My sister - who is a devout Christian - claims that I do not believe in God. This is not true, I simply see no compelling reason to posit one. What I do not believe in, what enrages me beyond reason at times, is religion. Or rather, the man (and the gender reference is used advisedly in this case) made construct of rules intending to regulate what people believe.

There has been much written of late of the evolutionary psychological roots of religion and the role that it played in the formation of civilization. And I take no issue with the past, what was useful to my ancestors, what may or may not have helped the human race move forward - if forward is in fact how we have moved (we are more "civilized" only in our level of sophistication, from a behavioral perspective we are the same old animals we ever were) - what I take issue with is the idea that it is all still relevant.

Understand, I am not talking about this from a personal perspective - worship Santa Claus if you want (something we do starting right after Halloween and ending around January 15th) - what I objective is the regulation of belief, the politics of spirituality if you will.

I object to the idea that someone - anyone - needs someone else to tell them what to believe, or not to believe. I particularly object to the idea that I must regulate my behavior - or in this case my wife or daughter must - because of what some other people believe that their deity has said must be done - or not done; because most of religious doctrine concerns itself with what not to do.

Despite Christ's exhortations that the restrictions of the Pharisees were preventing people from having a personal relationship with God, the man made infrastructure that was used to recapture the people from Christ's populism has concerned itself primarily with authority - with telling people what they were "allowed" by God to do.

And so we end up here - with the politics of sprituality making deals with the politics of secularity to repress women (the favorite whipping-girl of religion since the suppression of the goddess cults.) To own their reproductive capacity and treat them as vessels for the designs of (religious) men.

The only upside of all of that we can now rest assured that Obama really is no different than most other men.

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