My little missive to Rick Santorum

Dear Sen. Santorum: I have heard your cry to make religion more a part of the government and, by extension, more a part of the law than it is at the moment. And I have seen your ideas in action in the so-called "personhood" bills and other bits of legislation that seek to prevent a woman from controlling her own body.

And that is the essence of the problem.

When you say you want religion closer to public policy, you're not just talking about any religion. You're talking about your religion, which is an insular form of Roman Catholicism. If, say, the precedents of Shariah law were accorded some deference in Supreme Court rulings, you might not be as happy with the intermingling of church and state.

If the tales of Shiva, maker and destroyer of worlds, were somehow to become a fundamental part of the curriculum in public schools, this development would, I wager, cause you some distress.

The Hindu myths are not to be taken literally, although some people do. The Bible stories aren't to be taken literally, but some people do. Do we really want myths conflated with facts to guide our reasoning about pragmatic issues of the day? Not me.

See, that's my problem, Senator. Your religion wants to tell me what to do and what to think. It wants to run my life, even though I don't believe in the stories and tenets of that religion.

You know the Big Government that all you guys rail against, the one that is sapping our precious freedoms? Well, that ain't nothing compared with Big Religion. So as a conservative, Senator, you would substitute one form of tyranny for another? Am I getting that right?

You said that you almost "threw up" when you read John Kennedy's speech about the meaning of freedom of religion. Then you lied about what the speech said, even as you've lied about the Dutch government's euthanasia program. Maybe you didn't know the truth. Recently you've been attacking education as unnecessary. And yet education can help us arrive at the truth.

But you are a member of that good old faith-based community, are you not? How can we, in the reality-based community, ever hope to understand the rightness of your position? And how are you ever to understand our position, since you already know what is right?

Discussion is fruitless; truth is as plain as the nose on your face. Truth is all laid out for you like a banquet. Please, don't go anywhere where your views might be challenged, because that would hurt the truth's feelings. Stay right there and listen to the echo.

Clearly there should be morality in public life; there should be morality in private life, come to that. You don't steal or kill or loiter with intent. You don't need a religion to tell you that; the secular law does a fine job, as does common sense and a host of cautionary television programs.

Morality is not the same as religion. As we have seen in recent scandals, there are plenty of pious but immoral people. So when you say you want more religion in American life, you're not talking about morality. Heck, anyone who has to beg for as much money as you do probably left his moral compass on the kitchen table a long time ago.

So what you're talking about is building a new society that is even more hypocritical than the current one, even more misogynistic than the current one, even more repressive than the current one. I think of a religious government as meaning: more sermons, fewer bridges.

Honest to God, Senator, I do not need more lectures from you and your magic book about how to run my life. And I certainly don't want the whole engine of government shifted so that it accords with your theology. Give that baby a rest; you're scaring the horses.

In other news: Peggy Ford, an internationally known clown and circus executive, died a few weeks ago. She toured with Ringling Bros., became artistic director of Make-A-Circus and then program director of the Circus Center, for whom she created the Clown Conservatory. She will be missed.

On March 13, her friends, colleagues and students are holding a memorial for her at Z Space (the former Theater Artaud), 450 Florida St. in San Francisco. There should be juggling and pratfalls and ancient gags, all in tribute to Ford. Tickets are $20, and are available at brownpapertickets.com. For information, call Z Space at (415) 626-0453 or go to www.zspace.org. Y'all come.