Wesley Smith has a post over at National Review‘s The Corner, remarking on how the Washington Post subtly undermines a commentary article advocating honesty in discussions of assisted suicide. The article by Kirsten Powers is all about public policy, and about language — how “verbal cloaking is the stock in trade of the ‘right-to-die’ forces” — not religion. There’s no mention of religion or anything to do with it, but the newspaper published the piece under the prominent heading, “Religion.”

Go there and read Wesley’s comments, which are insightful as always. But what does this remind you of? Yes, it’s the way folks who don’t like intelligent design — booksellers, for example — employ the strategy of segregating all arguments for ID under the category of “religion.”

Remember the Barnes & Noble mis-shelving imbroglio? They were — and last time I heard, still are — placing copies of books by Stephen Meyer (Darwin’s Doubt, Signature in the Cell) in the shelves marked “Christian Life.” I wrote a while back:

As a question of marketing, B&N would undoubtedly be smarter to shelf Darwin’s Doubt under Science where it belongs, rather than under “Christian Life,” where customers will have a devil of a time finding it.

Remember, nothing about the book suggests religious content, including the publisher’s own recommended categorizations, which all have to do with science. So where did they get the idea of sticking it under religion? Andrew charitably suggests several possible explanations, including simple error or oversight.

I can only assume that someone on the corporate team found it more attractive, piquant, to stick a finger in the eye of people they don’t like (the phantom menace, “creationists”!), including customers, even at the expense of sales, even at a time when chain bookstores face near-extinction.

The right description of this is “passive aggressive.” At least dishonest name-calling (e.g., denouncing ID as “science denial”) has the virtue of showing hostility openly, rather than cloaking it as something else. Wesley writes:

There is a purpose behind such mislabeling prestidigitation: When anti-euthanasia advocacy and arguments are branded “religious” — a meme ubiquitously pushed in media stories about assisted suicide — it furthers the pro-assisted suicide tactic of branding opponents theocrats who are trying to force their dogma on unbelievers.

Once again, where have you heard that before? Wouldn’t it be refreshing if those on the opposite side of the arguments we’re involved in articulated substantive objections to our views, stated those plainly, read and considered our response, responded to that in turn in the same manner, and so on? But that would be a debate, something from which members of the Evolutionary Defense Force typically flee as fast as they can.

Image: Head of Janus, Vatican Museum, Rome, by Loudon Dodd (Own work) [GFDL or CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.