But apparently this is a situation faced by many families as they have to consider spending down everything they have before they can qualify for state or federal assistance. But all this makes me think that if we were to identify the true destroyer of American families, it is not the red-herring thrown by the Religious Right, such as LGBT marriage equality. It is the lack of universal health care.

This is the side of disease that the unaffiliated rarely see. And it is certainly the side of disease that Religious Right opponents embryonic stem cell research and their neoconservative allies most definitely do not want to talk about. The Knights of Columbus spent millions is support of Proposition 8 so that LGBT couples would be denied marriage equality. Yet when it comes to defending my family from possible financial ruin -- they don't give a damn at all. In fact, they actually oppose this research that could help me.

Long-term disease and disability have devastating consequences for any family. Sons who should be playing catch with a father instead is forced to lift his hand to help him scratch a head itch; daughters who should driven to a friend's house must instead help him eat is dinner; a wife who works and takes care of her children has the added stress of rolling her husband over on his side simply because he cannot do so on his own.

But that is only part of the stressful scenario. Income that would ordinarily pay for the upkeep of a house or family vacations, instead pays for home-aids and drivers to take the afflicted family member to work -- that is if he is fortunate enough to have a job. Longtime friends cannot be visited simply because there is no way for a power wheelchair to get into a friend's house with a flight of steps by the front door. These and a thousand other circumstances affect my life and tens of thousands of people in circumstances like mine. Some of the circumstances are obvious, some are subtle and are the kinds of things people who are fully able bodied as I once was, take for granted.

Many lives are put on hold because of one with disability. Families without health insurance cannot afford the medical equipment -- ventilators, toilet lifts, leg braces -- that may actually improve a patient's quality of life. Isolation is an ever-present reality.

How ironic it is that many of the opponents of embryonic stem cell research also oppose universal healthcare! Neoconservative William Kristol is a perfect example. In 1993, when President Clinton attempted some form of national health insurance, Kristol circulated a memo to fellow Republicans in which he claimed: "There is no health care crisis."

In the coming weeks the Religious Right will take their culture war of aggression to the Obama administration. They will cite stem cell research, along with marriage equality and universal health care as the things that will break down the American family. No one should be fooled by the diversionary battles of the culture war couched in the language of religious orthodoxies. The real agenda for Kristol and his neoconservative pals is an irreligious economic libertarianism. It is the same ideology of economic buccaneerism advanced by the likes of Ludwig Von Mises, Fredrich Hayek and Milton Friedman -- and embraced by political leaders in both parties. And we have seen what their ideas have wrought in the current economic crisis.

May God help us if they once again prevail. If they do, they will certainly further weaken the very thing they claim they want to defend, the American family.