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Angry at presidential candidate Gary Bauer's stance against gay marriage, Salon.com sex columnist Dan Savage deliberately tried to sabotage the campaign from the inside. "My plan? Get close enough to Bauer to give him the flu, which, if I am successful, will lay him flat just before the New Hampshire primary," he wrote in a Salon.com article that appeared yesterday. "I would go to Bauer's campaign office and cough on everything—phones and pens, staplers and staffers. I even hatched a plan to infect the candidate himself. I would keep the pen in my mouth until Bauer dropped by his offices to rally the troops. And when he did, I would approach him and ask for his autograph, handing him the pen from my flu-virus incubating mouth."

New York Post columnist Rod Dreher is outraged—and so is the Bauer campaign. "This is trash-can journalism at its worst," Iowa campaign director Loras Schulte told Dreher.

"These students come to school at night and mostly associate with other nontraditional students, and the programs don't communicate very effectively the distinctive religious mission of these schools to them," says the University of Akron's John Green, who worked on the study Mission, Formation & Diversity: Adult Education Programs at Church-Related Colleges.

"Go on campus during the day and there's a lot of effort to communicate the religious message of the school to the younger kids."

The president of Liberty University says the Justice Department keeps a secret database about religious and antiabortion leaders, and he wants to see it. The FBI and White House don't think it exists, according to an Associated Press story.

"The Bible and prayer are making a comeback in the workplace," reports Monday's Christian Science Monitor. "Deeply religious executives, once quiet about their faith, are speaking up about where they stand." The article echos a similar BusinessWeek cover story that appeared in November.

"A team assigned to review the abortion policy of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has concluded that church entities have downplayed a 1992 policy considered moderately pro-choice in favor of an unbridled pro-choice policy adopted in 1983," the Prebyterian News Service reports.

Those crosses placed along roadsides as memorials to crash victims are under attack, reports the Associated Press. Debate has flared up in Oregon, Texas, Washington, Montana, California, and Florida. "Once you open the door, you open the door to all kinds of memorials," Dave Fidanque of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon told the news service. "You might not be very happy with what happens down the road."

"One wonders how far the proponents of this view are willing to take their reasoning," says John West of those who think Baptist missionaries promote intolerance. "Do they also think that people shouldn't share their political beliefs with those from a different political party? After all, someone might be offended." The associate professor of political science's guest editorial appeared Tuesday.

Muslims in Zamfara are quick to note that shari'a, based on Koranic law, will apply only to Muslims. But Christians are still worried (see also the BBC's coverage)

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January (Web-only) 2000, Vol. 44