Regardless of where you stand on this issue, it was a very entertaining debate. Great TV while preparing dinner.

Although, not a big fan, I think Hitchins clobbered him.

BTW, that second video is just plain creepy.

Hi Chris--I saw that exchange last night too and thought Blackwell looked uninformed and foolish. I live in Ohio, so he was our Sec'y of State during the Bush years and a real piece of work. But up against Hitchens, he looks idiotic. How the hell people like him manage to bring the free market into discussions about religion is beyond me--just shows his partisanship, I think. He also makes the mistake, as many fundamentalists do, of conflating morality with Christianity (or even religion in general). Ethics is entirely different from religion--people can have lots of both, neither of either, or one or the other. Finally, his contempt for Hitchens--the laughing and calling him "erudite"--came precisely when he clearly didn't know enough about the Founders of America (Pilgrims = Founders ???): this is the oldest trick in the book--pick on your opponent, call him elite, when you can't argue the content.

Thanks for posting this. Sometimes I think Hitchens is an arrogant ass, but when he's paired with the likes of Blackwell, he comes off positively graceful!

And yes, your point is dead-on. Nobody is saying Christians can't practice their religion when they reiterate the wall of separation. That's a reductivism that brings scared voters to the booth to pull the lever for Republicans.

I saw the Gathering Storm vid last night too--maybe on the same show? I thought the moderator didn't let the guy from the Human Rights group talk enough--the religious woman in red kept talking over him and the moderator then kept giving the floor to her. It drove me nuts. And the ad is unbelievably guilty of the flaw in logic that you mention--all this talk of taking away our freedoms and losing our rights because gay people can get married??? OMG, this kind of idiotic logic drives me crazy.