In a well-reasoned and delivered sermon this evening, our Rabbi broached the subject of the Florida Legislature and its Governor legislating life to a comatose woman.  Legislatures can make laws that specify and impose death sentences for certain crimes in certain situations.  Governors can grant pardons which bestow life upon certain individuals who would otherwise die or languish in prisons.  The power to grant life and death is derived by religiously minded people from Scriptures that tell how an invisible, all-powerful and omnipresent God created our world and all the living creatures in it.  When people take on the mantle of God and take away the lives of others and when legislatures and Governors put a feeding tube into a woman who is in a vegetative state, we embark on difficult controversy.

Fundamentalists are now directing the discourse about life and death of fetuses and this woman in Florida. They insist that life is all-important even in cases where the result is great unhappiness. Others believe life is not worth living for those who appear to be born less than human and to those like the woman who has not lived like you or me for thirteen years. These Fundamentalists have become so powerful that their way may become our way.  They have affected legislation and are in control of the Republican Party. These Fundamentalists affect Conservatives of all stripes and push them to foolish and dangerous positions that divide us.  They polarize the discourse by calling their opponents people who murder and Fundamentalists have, at times, justified the murder of those would allow abortion.

The power to grant life and death should not be subject to elections that can be overturned and reversed in the next balloting. This is happening in America where there once were verities almost everyone assumed were unchangeable. Life and death are not something upon which only those with religious convictions can agree. Partisan and militant minorities are tinkering with these bedrock constitutional issues.  They severely test the patience of the vast majority of people who have no strong opinions on these problems.  Religious majorities in this country are not united on anything except their freedom to practice what they believe.  This minority of extreme Fundamentalists wish to revise our civil government and end the separation of Church and State.

By injecting themselves into legal aspects of life and death, extreme Fundamentalists have become so powerful that they control the way we make laws, test them and enforce them. These Fundamentalists and the Conservatives they influence have assumed power over life and death. The direction they are herding us in leads us down a dangerous road. Despite the conservative nature of our courts today, they should have the last word and let Church and State remain separated.