In modern times, the presidency has great moral sway over the nation. Under G. W. Bush, part corporate executive, part Christian pastor, we have begun to witness a steady flow of moralizing on behalf of free enterprise and biblical conservatism. The author of Compassionate Conservatism, Marvin Olasky, an atheist intellectual who became a born-again Christian, is like his spiritual counselor. It is the introduction of his ideas into the law of the land that could be a nightmare for freethinkers and advocates of church/state separation. Already, the president's moves against abortion and in favor of school vouchers are warnings of more to come.

Calling for 8 billion dollars to fund faith-based organizations, he and Olasky would provide a wholesale government endorsement of religion as well as an enormous financial boost to church coffers, monies that are fungible, applicable to sectarian usage. There's no denying that some possible good may come from this plan; but it's the very heavy price in freedom, that we almost certainly will pay, which should concern us. (Barry Lynn of Americans United is doing a fine job via the media in defense of church state separation).

There is a wide cultural divide at the heart of this struggle. Can America remain publicly and officially neutral in its philosophical values, and private and free in its religious choices? Bush and company would blur that difference. Let's hear what Mr. Berlet has to say on the 25th and express our varied concerns. At 2:00 PM, come to the Science Center at Harvard University, hall A, and enjoy the social hour following the Q and A.

Tom Ferrick

On March 11 2:00 PM
Meet at The Science Center at Harvard University, Hall A
Recognizing the Personal Crises
Of Gay and Lesbian Students

Arthur Lipkin, of Harvard's School of Education, who is the author of Understanding Homosexuality, will address Humanists, the Harvard community and the general public in hall A of the Science Center at Harvard on March 11.

The drive of some adopted children to locate their adoptive parents can be intense and relentless, even if they have had a happy childhood and are thoroughly bonded with their adoptive parents. Periodically we see in the press a story of some incredible escapade of a mature adoptive child who eventually finds and reunites with his or her long-lost natural parent, usually in a maudlin, climactic scene. Such is the phenomenal pull of perceived genetic heritage.

On the other hand, some adoptive children evince no interest whatever in seeking or meeting their parents of origin, feeling that if their original parent(s) gave them up, they want nothing to do with them. They are quite satisfied with their life as it is, thank you.

Birds are frenetic parents?for a while. It is known now that even alligators look after their young for a while. But clearly, no class of animals tends its young so resolutely and so long as mammals. The bonding of an ewe to its new-born lamb is powerful. Within minutes of birth there is an intense secretion of the hormone oxytocin from the brain which produces this phenomenon. If a lamb is separated from its mother within a few minutes of birth and returned even 30 minutes later, this oxytocin surge does not occur and the lamb will be rejected, not suckled, and die. It is apparently through smell that this bond is established.

A newborn gnu is dropped into a tremendous herd. And hundreds, sometimes thousands are born in a single day. This evolutionary strategy allows many to survive the inevitable onslaught of predators, since the lions and hyenas can kill only so many each day and within a few days the gnus are sufficiently strong and agile to elude their predators. Yet each mother in this whirling, intersecting throng can identify her baby (and vice versa).

Animals can be fooled into wet-nursing and supporting the young of another of the same, or even different, species. The catbird makes an evolutionary strategy of this phenomenon, pushing another birds egg out of the nest and laying her own therein. Sometimes this makes for a bizarre situation, since the catbird chick may be larger than the mother (and father) that are rearing it. But this seems certainly to be programmed behavior.

And yet, it would appear that through many centuries and in many human cultures, infanticide, especially of females, was a not uncommon behavior, especially in subsistence situations or in situations of deformity. The legend of Oedipus epitomizes this experience and, perhaps, the retribution for such rejection.

This is a circuitous lead-in to the phenomenon of adoption among humans. Some couples will opt for as many as 10 cycles of In Vitro Fertilization and perhaps even surrogacy to conceive a genetically identified child. Some say they could simply never relate to someone else‚s child, no matter how cute and cuddly. Recently, in England, it was discovered that two babies had been switched inadvertently at birth. Even though the babies were now 2 years old, the couples quickly decided to switch them back. I have had prospective parents say to me that they could never love a child who was not their own.

In human cultural development, great emphasis has been laid upon the importance of paternity. In many Arab cultures, it is the duty of a brother to kill a sister if even the slightest hint of possible loss of virginity before marriage occurs. And the courts tend to treat such a crime very leniently.

Recent investigations have shown that our notion of the constancy and fidelity of coupled birds is pathetically naïve. Close observation indicates plenty of hanky-panky. Extensive DNA surveys in the US would indicate that among those who at least know of no adoptive situation, as one wag put it, "about 5% of sons and daughters are sending Father‚s Day cards to the wrong person."

As devotedly and persistently as some adoptees seek their parents, some couples seek adoptees, even if they already have healthy progeny of their own and could have more. They spend considerable money and effort in obtaining an adoptee locally, or, most often, from a third-world country. Such experience is related in the legend of Moses in the bullrushes.

Why in the name of a selfish gene should people be doing this? Perhaps the mothering or fathering impulse is even stronger than the impulse to raise and protect only one‚s genetic progeny? Perhaps in the remote days of the human band or tribe, when child mortality was frequent, the survival of a child was considered even more important than its lineage and adoptive behavior was culturally encouraged. Is this adoptive behavior selfish because it gives people satisfaction and joy to nurture an unfortunate human, or is it altruism exemplified? Or is it that we humans are, after all, black, white, yellow, red or brown, sharing perhaps 99+% of our genes and the remarkable issue is not difference, but our amazing similarity! So, in fact, every human is closely related to every other human.

Joe Gerstein