The Alabama Supreme Court ruling on frozen embryos is exactly why we have, in this country, a separation of church and state.
Mind you, this is the same state that has laws in effect declaring that a pregnant woman can be charged with murder should she miscarry. (Those laws have been used for just that purpose. They originated in precisely the same ignorance as the Supreme Court ruling and produce an unjustness that should infuriate any compassionate individual.)
And now, thanks to the narrow-minded shortsightedness of religious authoritarians, childless couples may lose an important tool for starting a family, over what is, scientifically, a nonissue.
Oh, but religiously speaking... And that's the root of the problem, isn't it?
Decades ago, I read a book called 200 Years to Christmas by J.T. McIntosh, one half of a double novel published in 1961 by Ace. In this story, the inhabitants of a generational ship swing back and forth between often extreme and quite silly sociopolitical fads.
My greatest fear is that the US will become ensnared in such cycles, not out of the boredom caused by a long interstellar journey, but by the loss of an understanding of history, through the self-absorption so celebrated in our current culture, and out of a lack of thought for the long-term consequences of policy.
When Democrats embrace extremism (as many have with their acceptance of white supremacism in the form of identity politics, DEI initiatives, and CRT mandates, not to mention an outright capitulation to debunked Marxist dogma), the initial reaction by Republicans is to move in concert toward the political center, a phenomenon captured in a recent Pew poll on political leanings.
However, the longer the mainstream Democratic platform and policy base lingers in extremism, the more likely it is for Republicans to counter with their own brand of extremism and swing to the true far right, a house Republicans have not inhabited for decades, if ever, contrary to what CNN and MSNBC declare on an hourly basis.
Meanwhile, each party, along with its constituent participants, has donned the clothing of a True Believer and assumes a zeal for control of the political playing field equal to, and equally as irrational as, the religious fervor of the Salem Witch Trials.
The Constitution, rooted as it was in a long tradition of balance between competing political interests, was intended as a counter to exactly this kind of power mongering and unreason. It was supposed to ground our political structure in such a way as to create long-term stability, with a small, thoughtful, slow-acting government and an overriding regard for the individuals whom lawmakers served. It was intended to protect individuals from the leviathan, not serve them up as fodder for an internecine war.
Yet here we stand on the precipice of forever being caught between two extremes, neither of which respects the individual, only the sanctity of the group's beliefs, however wrong, unreasonable, or unfounded those beliefs may be.
In fact, the rights, responsibilities, and freedoms of the individual were the first tragic casualties in this war.
We have been moving steadily toward universal freedom and equality under the law (the only equality that may ever, in reality, be achieved) since Day 1, with the only limit being a respect for the rights, responsibilities, and freedoms of our fellow humans. Not a perfect forward motion, no, but a steady one.
And now we are in a state of regression away from respect, away from liberty, away from the ideals, imperfect as they may be, that once made this country a harbor for the wretched refuse yearning to breathe free.
Of what use is a society that so easily discards the values upon which it was founded? Where is the honor in such a people?