Daily Kos is one of the biggest liberal/Democratic blogs out there (or so I’m told), which makes this all the more interesting:

I have been a militant atheist all my life. Not militant in wanting to destroy religion, but in keeping it out of the public sphere.

But I have come to a conclusion recently that has startled me, obvious as it seems to me in retrospect — it wasn’t religious language that bothered me, it was the “values” promoted couched in religious terms.

I would cringe — and continue to cringe — when politicians and religous figures cite scripture to justify hatred towards gays or any other class of people. But I don’t cringe when scripture is used to justify poverty relief, or conservation (“protecting God’s creation”), or social security (“honor thy mother and thy fathers”), or oppose the death penalty, or oppose the war. […]

Liberals, outside the black churches, have ceded the moral language to the Right, in large part because of people like me who flinched at every reference to God by a Democrat.

But using Christianity or Buddhism or any other religion as a moral foundation is really no less superior than the moral structure I use to guide my life (I’m a utilitarian). All that should matter is that we all arrive at the same conclusion.

Not that I’m ready to sign on to the Left’s political agenda, but it would be a heartening development if no one party is thought to have a monopoly on “values” or religion.

Also, a welcome blow from the Left against the argument that religious reasons are per se illegitimate in public debate.