All political objectives you oppose. Democrats, liberals, feminists, environmentalists, and gays have "agendas." Right-wing politicians have "hopes" and "dreams" and "godly plans of action."

• Repeat your original answer/argument using different language. Example: "If you don't agree with me, you're going to Hell." "Please explain why you say that." "People who don't believe in literal Biblical inerrancy are destined for eternal damnation."
• Use loaded language. Example: He's not an abortionist, he's a "baby-murderer."
• Rely exclusively on certain verses of the Bible, while ignoring any verses that contradict your position. For example, Leviticus 20:13 says that male homosexuality is an abomination unto the Lord and a capital offense. Leviticus 19:19 forbids cross-breeding, acne pimples, and wearing cotton-polyester blends (or any other kind of fabric blends).
• Make use of sweeping generalizations, particularly about the character and eventual destination of anyone who disagrees with you.
• Resort to ad-hominem attacks. If someone questions your logic, he is a godless liberal atheist who is destined for eternal damnation.
• If the facts are against you, quote Scripture. If Scripture is against you, it is being misinterpreted by your opponent, who is deceived (q.v.). If both facts and Scripture are against you, shout and pound on the table. (This technique was invented by lawyers.)
• Change the subject. For example, someone says, "How can you say that Jesus is in favor of preemptive war? Didn't he go to his death rather than cause harm to any other human being?" Reply, "The Book of Revelation talks about—"
• Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. If some fact might embarrass you, never reveal it. If someone else does, suppress it, deny it, or mock it. This is the Bush administration's standard approach to science, particularly global warming.
• Become incredulous and indignant (the "how dare you?" gambit). Example: "How dare you suggest that innocent civilians incarcerated at abu Ghraib were tortured! You are dishonoring our fine military. You should be ashamed of yourself." This tactic worked so well on Congressman Dick Durban (who suggested that the many verified reports of torture and abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan, and abu Ghraib sounded like something out of Nazi Germany rather than the United States) that he actually ended up apologizing for offending our fine military.
• Denounce any fact that contradicts your position as a scurrilous rumor or a wild accusation.
• Use a straw man. Find or create a piece of your opponent's argument that you can easily knock down to make yourself look good and the opponent to look bad. Example: "People who believe in the theory of evolution believe that God does not exist, and therefore did not create the Universe, natural selection, or anything else."
• Resort to name-calling and ridicule. Anyone who opposes you is by definition a godless Commie liberal homosexual-loving bigot destined for eternal damnation.
• Hit and run. Responding to an opponent's questions and criticisms merely dignifies his/her position.
• Question the other person's motives. Twist or amplify any fact to make it appear that your opponent is biased, out only to fulfill his/her personal agenda. Force your opponent onto the defensive. "I guess you just hate Jesus, don't you?"
• Invoke authority. If you can't come up with support from the Bible for your position, surely some fundamentalist "scholar" has written something. "He's the dean of the Closed Minds School of Theology, obviously he knows more than you do about the subject."
• Play dumb. Whatever your opponent says, reply, "You're not making the slightest bit of sense. You have no idea what logic is. You don't have any facts to support you."
• Associate your opponent's charges with old news. (This is a variation on the straw man argument.) For example, if someone asks whether Jesus would approve of torturing someone to compel him to tell you what you want to hear, say, "That's ancient history, and anyway, all the torture was carried out by privates and corporals."
• Take the "high road." Confess that you made some minor mistake but that your opponent is blowing it out of all proportion, charging you with much worse mistakes or crimes that are simply not true. Example: "So I slipped in calling a first-month miscarriage a 'baby-killing.'" Remember, it's all about your opponent's weaknesses.
• Paint the entire affair as too complex to understand. "The Lord moves in mysterious ways."
• Reason backwards. "If there were any evidence that George W. Bush wanted to go to Iraq so he could finish the job his father started, only more successfully, the media would have uncovered it. Therefore, he wanted to go to Iraq because Saddam was behind 9/11, just as Bush said he was."
• Demand that your opponent provide a complete solution to your problem. Example: "Since you know so much, prove to me how an irreducibly complex system like a human being could 'just happen.'"
• Fit the facts to your conclusion. "I am a physician, and I spent about half an hour looking at a several-years-old, heavily doctored videotape of the patient. She is not in a persistent vegetative state" — as subsequent facts proved — "so people who want to fulfill her wishes and allow her to die with dignity are murderers."
• Change the subject. "All this business about the book of Revelation having been written as anti-Nero propaganda is nonsense. The Messiah would never stoop to propaganda. The Messiah—"
• Emotionalize, antagonize, and goad your opponents. Make it all about them, the godless queer-loving commie bigots.
• Demand proof from your opponent, preferably proof that is impossible to come by. "You say that most of the book of Genesis was put into writing around 925-910 BCE, by someone who hero-worshiped King David? What fundamentalist Bible college teaches that? Show me your archeological evidence."
• Use false evidence. Quote from the book of Dalmatians or the book of Amphibians, for example. The chances are excellent that the person you're talking to can't tell the difference between Abraham and Moses anyway.
• Manufacture a new truth. If you can't come up with any facts to support your position, appeal to fundamentalist religious authorities, authors, or leaders, or invent new ones.
• Create a distraction. Example: If someone says, "I believe that God created the Universe, including natural selection," say, "There is nothing in the Bible to support your position."

Based on the verse in Genesis in which Yahweh gives humanity (specifically, men) dominion over the Earth, Dominionism (also called reconstructionism) teaches that right-wing fundamentalist Christians must bring all societies around the world under the rule of God — that is, under the rule of their version of Christianity. Dominionists, including George W. Bush, are attempting to peacefully convert the laws of the United States so that they match the laws of the Hebrew Scriptures (which they call the Old Testament).

Once the world has willingly accepted their version of the Kingdom of God, religious freedom will not be tolerated; all religions and religious organizations that are not strict fundamentalists will be suppressed — forbidden to worship, proselytize, or even assemble. Any person who attempts to follow his or her non-Dominionist beliefs outside the confines of his/her home will be tried for idolatry and executed. Blasphemy, adultery, and homosexuality will also be capital offenses.

Specifically, Reconstructionists:

• Reject antinomianism; that is, they believe that faith alone will not bring about salvation, but must be accompanied by good works and living a right-wing fundamentalist lifestyle;
• Accept that every word of the Bible is literally factual (even the songs, poetry, and fables);
• Worship the Bible as being as inerrant as God is;
• Believe that Christ will not return to Earth until most of the Earth practices Dominionism;
• Interpret the 613 laws of the Mosaic Code as being either ceremonial or moral (the high priest doesn't have to wear bells on his clothing, but homosexuals and adulterous women (not men) must be stoned to death);
• Accept that God cannot change (despite all the Bible verses saying otherwise) and therefore God's laws cannot change, except maybe the ones about burying one's feces (Deut. 23:13) or building one's (adobe) house;
• Hold the laws of the Hebrew Scriptures has having primacy over the laws of the Christian Testament, except in those cases where the Dominionists prefer the latter;
• Criminalize all modern behavior that does not match Dominionist morality;
• Ban all marriages that are not of a Dominionist man to a Dominionist women (e.g., interfaith, interracial, or same-sex marriage);
• Regard all non-Dominionist theology as being "of the Devil" (prominent Dominionist theologian David Chilton wrote, "the god of Judaism is the devil").

At the moment at which a living sperm meets a living egg and forms a living blastomere, human life doesn't just begin, it becomes indistinguishable from independent human personhood, and therefore of greater value to society than its mother. A reasonable person might suppose that a human becomes a person (rather than a blastomere, embryo, or fetus) with a lot of help from first its mother and, after birth, society. In fact, it is not true that A might become B, with a lot of help; rather, A is indistinguishable from B from the moment of conception onward. (This also holds true for people in persistent vegetative states, like Terri Schiavo. To make any distinction between a person who can vote, drink alcohol, marry, and own property and a blastomere, or Terri Schiavo, is to condemn oneself to the fires of Hell for all eternity.)

Jerry Merchant and Mary Matthews