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BY STEVE TILLETT

As my grandmother used to say, 'Enough is enough, and too much smells.' I rise from my sickbed ? having heard several days' worth of blather on television from folks who continue to misrepresent God ? to register my objections to the inferences in the Terri Schiavo case.

The GOP leaders and their fellow manipulators on the evangelical 'right' hijacked what should be a personal matter between members of a family, and turned it into a circus. Those who wanted to keep Terri Schiavo alive, in spite of the wishes of her rightful legal representative, her husband Michael, said that they are 'erring on the side of life.' So now the very concept of 'life' is the sole domain of these people? God help us.

I find it interesting that these same people, who will insert themselves in the middle of a private family matter to preserve the existence of someone who has been brain-dead for years, are some of the most rabid advocates of using the death penalty, no matter the age or mental status of the person involved. How can you maintain you are 'on the side of life' and then threaten the life of Michael Schiavo, as some have done, for daring to try to honor his wife's wishes about what she would want done under these circumstances? It is a private family matter, supported by reams of legal precedent.

Those who are not family members, but feel they have the right to insert themselves into this intimate matter, want to keep a brain-dead woman they don't know alive, as fodder for their latest misgbwc_superusered crusade. Families make these decisions every day, gbwc_superusered by established legal precedent, without the interference of people named Bush and DeLay.

Somehow there seems to be what I will call a 'life disconnect.' Folks who claim they want to 'err on the side of life' seem only to err when life is at its beginning or its end. What happened to all those years in between? If one wants to truly err on the side of life, one will do everything possible to ensure equity and access for all of our citizens in every season of life, irrespective of their socioeconomic standing or their ethnic heritage.

To be taken seriously as people interested in life and quality of life, one would have to be an advocate for Head Start, Medicare and Medicaid, health insurance for every American and affordable college education for everyone who is willing to work their way through college. Those are a sampling of things that address real life issues, even more than God's earliest creative activity in the womb or coercing a vegetative existence on some poor family at the end of life.

There are two more ironies that need to be addressed. I found it insulting that the GOP pushed one of their most ethically challenged members to the forefront to engineer interference in the life of the Schiavo family. They couldn't do any better than Tom DeLay? But then, Tom DeLay has a history of circumventing the law of the land when it suits him, such as the re-redistricting of Texas Legislative Districts because he was unhappy with results of the original redistricting after the 2000 Census. It is interesting to hear men named Bush (in Washington and Florida) and DeLay speak about our nation as being a nation of laws ? but only up to the point where the laws render decisions with which they agree.

I pray that my fellow citizens will rise up in active and persistent response to the politics of arrogance and extremism while we have a country we can still vaguely recognize. To remain silent in the face of these, and many other obvious abuses, only invites more of the same.

Rev. Stephen Andrew Tillett is pastor of Asbury-Broadneck UMC in Annapolis. He can be reached at .