  Thank you Mary for providing some good opinion to respond to. As I was reading your post I found my self disagreeing with a couple of statements you made so I had to respond.
I just don't see how you can say "I want to take down the idea that right-winged, conservatives aren't open people. DOn't believe that stereotype," when you yourself blatantly state: " Students who are viewed to be the smart ones are viewed that way... because they're left-winged/secularists who use data up the ying-yang to prove their point. " Isn't that a major stereotype you just have created yourself? It seems as if you call all the "smart" people boot-lickers who side with the side that their liberal teachers take, that we are not guided by morals in our arguments but only by "data" and scientific experiments. I personally have very strong morals I comply with and I am somewhat religious (if there is such a thing) but I always prove my every argument with "imperical data" just because that's the info that can not be made up and can not be proven wrong or considered opinionated; numbers do not swing either liberal or conservative, they are neutral.
What you say about writing papers that teachers like I also consider to be very argumentative, and it of course depends on the school you go to, but the majority of teachers I am sure would prefer you to write a paper that is original in idea and content and shows you to be open-minded thinker. About abortion, it's great that you have that kind of sense of responsibility for your actions, and I think it's partly because you know that that won't ever happen to you, but we have to remember about all the people that simply do not have that kind of education/surrounding atmosphere/family to support them when they are faced with that kind of choice of either having a child and giving up their future or seeing a doctor for a couple hours and killing that precious spark of life. I still don't know what I would exactly do myself, but I would probably side with you. However I am very strongly for abortion for those who NEED it, or who believe they do.
GM: I don't know how you can tell a gay person that he/she wasn't even "intended" to be alive on this earth, just because it says in the Bible that God did not include gays in his original design. I read the Bible many times and I totally agree with Rob that if we do not follow everything there is written in it, like fasting and strictly following the ten commandments, then why should we tell other people that they don't have the right to marry just because it says so in the Bible.
I really think there shouldn't even be such an issue. I want to reference slavery in what Jefferson wrote about the exclusion of Black people from the constitutional definition of "men" just based on the reasoning that Afr. Amer. are "a different species," thus degrading "a whole race of men from the rank in the scale of being which THEIR(? ) Creator may perhaps have given them. " Maybe gays should be excluded from the ranks of "men"?, they are sort of a different species too... "We are at war... with terrorism ... racism ... but most of all we are at war with ourselves.
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