I actually have great respect for many of the conservative bioethicists, most notably Leon Kass, whose picture graces the beginning of the article. I think I should mention this at the outset, since this respect will not be very evident in the remainder of this post.

Saletan writes that he believes that

"The best way to deal with repugnance is to listen to it, articulate it, and incorporate it."

This seems, at first glance, compelling. Perhaps a feeling of repugnance is significant of a deeper wisdom that we can not yet articulate, and we would then ignore it to out later sorrow.

But consider practically any instance of a moral question now settled. In the United States, it is convenient to use questions of race. Let us imagine ourselves back 60 years into our past and see what the wisdom of repugnance would have told us about interracial marriage.

There is no doubt that the idea of interracial sex was deeply repugnant to people at the time. What happened when people took this repugnance and followed Saletan's advice of "listen to it, articulate it, and incorporate it"? They came up with countless arguments that they convinced themselves where scientific to excuse their repugnance. Now we can see these arguments for what they are, but at the time they fooled those who listened to their repugnance.

The human faculty of reason is remarkably good at providing excuses for things, and no matter what the object of repugnance is, if you start from the standpoint of trying to find some way to incorporate it into your morality, you will.

Saletan was right about one thing, and that is the importance of the admission of uncertainty (though it is perhaps unfair to claim it solely for liberals). Too bad he doesn't apply this self-doubt where it is needed the most: our feelings of repugnance.

The admission of uncertainty - the willingness to ask "what if" - is very much the hallmark of classical liberalism

Starting with Spinoza - who was exiled and ostracized by a community that itself was in exile and ostracized, we see the rise of the idea that the decisions about the world we live in, how we live in it should be based in analytic, testable reason. That rationality is not only the preferred approach, but that any other approach is immoral (that was Spinoza's great contribution).

And that very much is the core of "liberalism".

for a long time, economic conservatives like Barry Goldwater also bought into the fundamental precepts of The Enlightenment (ie liberalism with a small "l") - but with the rise of Reagan and the "moral conservatives" we have seen conservatives abandon the notion that rationality is more important than unconfirmed belief.

And repugnance IS one of those "unconfirmed beliefs

Not all of us have abandoned reason. Just the Republican party.

First:

The author wasn't saying that emotive repugnance should be the guiding principle on which to base all policy; he said that it should not be dismissed as merely illogical, as emotive responses can sometimes tell us more than we would like to admit.

Also:

You seem to have the same intellectual baggage that those enlightenment thinkers you applaud lugged around. "Reason" is not an isolated, objective, guiding principle, separate from whatever conclusions it reaches. It is a tool, a method for deducing conclusions from facts and larger principles. What determines those principles are usually not based on reason. Can you really "prove" that rights exist? Reason never has, and never will, stand outside a larger moral framework. For example, in this argument, the tough questions -- what constitutes a human being, when is it justified to sacrifice some life to save another life, who makes these decisions -- are moral questions, not empirical questions. While I obviously decry the cynical religious right that uses wedge issues manipulate a pliant electorate, I would also be suspicious of anyone claiming to hold the monopoly on the "reasonable" side of the debate.

Saletan argues persuasively that one must not reflexively gag at anything, but carefully analyze, inspect, and incorporate the findings on it.

Scientists have a bad habit of dismissing many morality and religious questions to "icky" status, and end up apply the same intolerance they label others with. For example, if left to develop normally, that clump of cells becomes a living, functional human being. But scientists don't like to think about that when they are searching for the cure to cancer, because that would make them feel "icky" about destroying a life. So they rename it "embryos" and voila, no more feelings or ethical dilemma. Just a clump of cells here, nothing to see move along. Meanwhile, the layman sees that this kind of thinking is the same rational that, "for the sake of science and discovery", leads to the likes of mustard gas, atom bombs, and genetic purity programs. It's "icky" to them to reduce people to numbers or formulae. But that's what the scientists seem to think of us.

Saletan encouraged these scientists to temper their zeal for discovery and power politics with ethical concerns and a dash of the Golden Rule.

I entirely agree with Clifton. It doesn't take too much perusing of past news articles to find great quotes about racism, miscegenation, and repugnance. Take for example, Seaborn Roddenbery (Democrat of Georgia) floor speech from when he introduced the anti-miscegenation constitutional amendment in 1912:

"No blacker incubus ever fixed itself on this republic than the embryonic cancer of negro marriage to white people that has lately been in evidence. No more voracious parasite ever sucked at the heart of pure society and moral status than the one which welcomes or recognizes every where the sacred ties of wedlock between Africa and America." (Quote as reported by the Chicago Daily Tribune, "Denounces Legal Uniting of Races," Dec 12, 1912).

Or James Mahorner, then assistant attorney general of Florida, comments during the Supreme Court proceedings of McLaughlin v. Florida (1964):

"Mr. Mahorner also argued that the state should be allowed more power over marriage and sexual relationships than over other matters where race is involved because of the state’s responsibility for the welfare of children. He said the state could properly conclude that the children of interracial marriages may be at a psychological disadvantage and could therefore act to prevent their creation." ("Race, Sex and the Supreme Court", Anthony Lewis for the New York Times, Nov. 22, 1964.)

Repugnance may be a real emotion, but that doesn't make it a legitimate argument for or against anything.

It boggles my mind that in the discussion of the beginning of life that the real motivations of most neochristians is ignored, probably because most columnists take them at their word. While their innate proclivity for dishonesty would be a subject for an entire discussion, we can cite objective examples that demonstrate their true beliefs as opposed to their professed ones.

Within the right to life movement the sanctity of life at conception is held inviolate. But wait, how many fertility clinics have been bombed, the patrons harassed, while state legislatures are poised to make them illegal as soon as the courts will allow? Many fertilized embryos are wasted or willfully destroyed in this process. They only object if these same embryos were to be diverted from the waste bin and into scientific research.

Most of these folks also object to birth control which would lower the number of terminated pregnancies. What gives? Their real problem is not with protecting the embryonic soul but with sex outside of marriage. Much of the noise in the opposition to the cervical cancer vaccine is the wish to retain disease as a punishment for sex. How convenient it is that life begins at conception. Why not ovulation? Would one want to worry about all the lost souls, not to mention the great leaders and scientists that the world would be deprived of because of chastity?

One also wonders at their sincerety given that these same people object to any medical system that would ensure that unborn souls are given prenatal care regardless of the mother's economic status.