You have been successful in replacing comprehensive sex education programs in public schools with faith-based, platitude-laden, abstinence-only programs, which study after study have shown to be ineffective, if not counter-productive. More to the point, you have convinced the government to fund these religious programs exclusively.

By far your biggest success to date has been cowing the Bush administration into recognizing the “rights” of a blastocyst—a mass of undifferentiated cells—over those of human beings suffering from Alzheimer’s or spinal cord injuries or any number of diseases whose treatment and ultimate cure may be enhanced by stem cell research.

In your battle to protect the sanctity of life, you have often triumphed where reason and basic humanity would have dictated otherwise. Now you have the opportunity to use your considerable clout to accomplish something that any reasonable, humane person would consider categorically good, though we’ll need to tweak your no compromise definition of life to include postpartum humans of all ages and races and nationalities to be successful.

What I am proposing is nothing less than a constitutional amendment. We’ll call it the “conscience clause”— think rape victim and emergency contraception and religious beliefs.

It reads as follows:

Amendment XXVIII Section 1. No citizen of the United States shall be forced to support, through taxation or other levies, any government agency whose actions disregard the sanctity of human life, if said action is contrary to that individual’s religious beliefs or moral convictions.

Section 2. Citizens of the United States shall have the right to allocate their tax dollars to government agencies proportionately as their conscience dictates.

What this amendment would mean for Americans who value the sanctity of human life regardless of race, creed, national origin, or neocon ideology is that they could choose to redistribute the 27 percent (a conservative estimate) of their federal income tax now going to the military—and its life-threatening mission—to a government agency whose mission is life-enhancing.

To get a visual of the impact this amendment could have, go to the interactive tax chart at www.nationalpriorities.org. If you paid $15,000 in federal taxes last year, $4080 was dedicated to the destruction of human life, $675 to education, $390 to nutrition programs, $225 to environmental protection, and $285 to housing. Now, reallocate your tax dollars according to your conscience.

This “conscience clause” amendment will allow the American people to decide our national priorities. If we choose life, we will pay for it. If we choose death, we will pay for it. Either way, the credit or the blame for our priorities will rest squarely on our heads. We will no longer be able to hide our culpability in a corrupted political process.

My question and my challenge then: can Atheists and Fundamentalists put aside our significant differences and work together to protect the sanctity of all human life?

I have to be honest here. I need you guys. You know how to get things done.

If you’re on board, we’ll need to act quickly and decisively. Every indication is that the “faith-based” administration you’ve supported these last seven years is about to expend more of our gold and our children’s lives on a new round of bloodletting in Iran.

Biography: Robert Weitzel is a freelance writer whose essays appear in The Capital Times in Madison, WI. He has been published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Skeptic Magazine, Freethought Today, and on popular liberal websites. He can be contacted at: robertweitzel@mac.com

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