Yes, fluff. They may be interested in what he has to say on that other stuff, but the only way for those other questions to impact their choice for president (for most in that audience) is by answering that question "correctly." Since he didn't, his answers to everything else were irrelevant.

And you're right that his answer was a bit of a sell out but in the opposite way you say. His "pay grade" comment was a desperate shout out to god in a feeble attempt to construct his "wrong" answer in a way that might get a handful of people in that audience to swallow it.

That's exactly how I meant it. He was afraid to answer it honestly.

And I don't understand the concept of answering the question for those in that specific audience. As if every question and answer wasn't going to be known outside that audience that was in the auditorium?

I thought his answer was fine. He said he supports [i]Roe[,/I] which with its trimester approach, pretty well sums up how a lot of people feel about abortion, i.e., they can support it without reservation in the early stages of a pregnancy, but the "ick" factor increases as time passes. (This, of course, is one reason why Roe looks more like sensible legislation than constitutional interpretation.) He then said he supported a ban on late term abortions with an exception for the health of the mother.

McCain said "life begins at conception," but lots of pro-choice people believe this, and it really doesn't resolve the constitutional questions.

On the Constitutional question, it's interesting that Scalia doesn't think that the writers of the Constitution ever meant for it to cover the unborn. He just thinks Roe is unconstitutional.

Then let's, quick, amend the Constitution to include an explicit--but nonetheless vaguely contoured--right to privacy and see if he holds to it. He might.

I will find it interesting to see how McCain squares his unequivocal stance that life begins at conception with his support of embryonic stem cell research.

And the accounts I read of the forum said that both candidates did very well, though they gave the edge to McCain. I got no sense of a butt-kicking.

From the clips I saw, I thought Obama did an excellent job of addressing that audience (and by that audience I mean the wider religious audience that would have been paying attention to the event, not just those in the auditorium). He seemed pretty adept at both referencing the biblical precedent for certain moralities while presenting stances that didn't require buying into biblical truth to agree with. And there was at least one instance where he said what sounded like a fairly striaght forward sentence that illicited an enthusiastic response from the audience, which I figued must mean it was one of those coded phrases that the republicans have been so adept at slipping into their rhetoric. I don't particularly like the tactic, but as long as his positions remain secularly defensible, if pandering a bit to the fundies wins the election I can't be too upset about it.

What's the secular defense in your mind for "Marriage is between a man and a woman?"

Yeah, he's not perfect. I've said from the beginning I'm not in 100% alignment with him. I'm barely in 100% alignment with myself though, so it's a bit unreasonable to expect to find a candidate that I agree with absolutely everything on.

Just to clarify, Alex: Saddleback Church

I watched some of the interviews on MSNBC (I think that's who was showing them). Interesting stuff. I took the "pay grade" comment to mean that he's not a scientist who is able to study the progress of a fetus, nor a religious scholar. But it did come off very badly.

I'm also a little peeved at his response to the question about marriage. Not that I'm really surprised, because almost all high-ranking Democrats take the coward's road when it comes to gay marriage. (eg: marriage betw. man & woman but supports civil unions)