It has now been over one month since President Obama was inaugurated. As someone who stands to benefit from the proper federal funding and oversight of embryonic stem cell research, I want to know why the President has yet to rescind the Bush administration restrictions of August 9, 2001 that were one of his signature appeasements to the Religious Right.

But after some delay, the President has kept his promise. And I am, to say the least, relieved. Along with many, many others I have worked to make this day happen (Let me be quite clear, I dare not claim that I even put in a fraction of the effort of at least one or two individuals or at least one or two organizations to whom this moment truly belongs).

And what of the opponents of the research? From where I stand I know that some of their number based their opposition on principle.  For them, their concern was humanity. But there are research opponents who are far less than principled. These are the neoconservative-backed Religious Right.

Two and a half years ago Eve Herold and I wrote a white paper for the Institute for Progressive Christianity about how their opposition was grounded in an odd distaste for modernity and how, in neo-Platonic fashion, everyone should just know their place in society - even the sick and disabled:

In their views on health care, neoconservatives, whether Protestant, Catholic or Jewish, seem to seesaw back and forth with shifting interpretations of "natural law." The one thing neoconservatives and the religious right do seem to agree on is their acceptance of an orthodox Catholic view of natural law. The concept of natural law appeals to them because its invocation appears to support a single orthodoxy; The common feature of all neoconservatives is that they much prefer the authoritarian role of religion to the spiritual. However, in simply referring to "natural law" so generically, as if the concept has only one authoritative interpretation, research opponents are misleading the public

And as we then pointed out, the real issue for Catholic neocons was not so much the research itself but what it represents to them:

In Plato's Republic, Socrates, in his dialogue, discusses the often harsh laws of life, death and illness. He credits medicine with "the invention of lingering death," and states that ". . . in all well-ordered states every individual has an occupation to which he must attend, and has therefore no leisure to spend in continually being ill." He goes on to say that the rich are exceptions to this rule, because they have the means to care for themselves without imposing a burden on society. But as for the common man:

When a carpenter is ill he asks the physician for a rough and ready cure; an emetic or a purge or a cautery or the knife-these are his remedies. And if someone prescribes for him a course of dietetics, and tells him that he must swathe and swaddle his head, and all that sort of thing, he replies at once that he has no time to be ill, and that he sees no good in a life which is spent nursing his disease to the neglect of his customary employment; and therefore bidding goodbye to this sort of physician, he resumes his ordinary habits, and either gets well and lives and does his business, or, if his constitution fails, he dies and has no more trouble.

The homage to authoritarian religion not withstanding, this law-of-the-jungle attitude is quite discernible in the neoconservatives' support of laissez-faire capitalism and other forms of social Darwinism. They seem to twist and turn the concept of natural law into whatever shape is needed to justify their position on the issue at hand. ... It may be rather complicated to connect all the dots, but once you do, it is easier to see how an administration could reject research on microscopic embryos while engaging in an unnecessary war that has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and displaced two million more ("Every human life is sacred, therefore we must save each and every embryo; the strong will inevitably vanquish the weak, and those who die in a "just war" are expendable").

Today is a bad day for these ivory-towered manipulators of faith. They ignobly conflated opposition to  embryonic stem cell research with faith itself and demonized supporters, and issued sometime very odd arguments which included the admonition, "The finitude of human life is a blessing for every human individual, whether he knows it or not."

In doing so they obfuscated the fact that many faiths and even the majority of American Catholics wanted the research federally funded.  They insisted that only adult stem cell research passed moral muster and should be the only such research pursued, this in spite of the fact that most adult stem cell researchers support ongoing embryonic stem cell research. The researchers - unlike embryonic stem cell research opponents - understood that it is necessary for comparative analysis. In other words, to stifle embryonic stem cell research impedes adult stem cell research.  And they were - and still are - willing to fuel a reactionary fears of modernity to try get their way.

But today, reason has prevailed over fear.

In 1936 FDR ran for reelection. At that time many of his supporters would say, "FDR gave me a job," "FDR gave me second chance" and of course, "FDR is my friend." Such testaments were affirmations of being given a second chance at life; the ability to rebound from economic calamity.

Today there are too many Americans who suffer from the calamity of disease and disability. Many, including myself, stare into an unknown future of loss of bodily function, becoming an increasing burden to our loved ones and, for too many, a premature death. I don't know if embryonic stem cell research will help me in my battle with muscular dystrophy. But I do believe it might help others. It will give hope and perhaps give someone else "a second chance." President Obama has given hope to those of us who want to see, if this research can live of up to even part of its potential.

And because of that, today is a great day for science and religious faith.