Appendix F. 
235 
social security survivor benefits to all but legal spouses. This is a 
■way for government to provide financial incentives for marriage. And 
for government to take sides on the value of marriage, proclaiming 
the union marked by it as good for individuals and good for the 
polity. This is a policy decision that does not engender bitterness or 
controversy. It must be acknowledged that the withholding of a 
reward could, under imaginable circumstances, stigmatize those 
who choose to live together as a loving couple but not to marry. But 
just as it can not plausibly be claimed today that the child tax credit 
confers social disapprobation on married couples without children, 
so too it cannot be plausibly claimed that unmarried couples suffer 
social disapprobation because of government policy that restricts the 
paying of social security survivor benefits to legal spouses. 
Or, from a different angle, consider the question of elementary 
level and high school education. In 1923, in a landmark decision, 
Meyer v. Nebraska 262 U.S. 390 (1923), the Supreme Court ruled that 
parents have a right to educate their children in a foreign language. 
In 1925, in a related case. Pierce v. Society of Sisters 268 U.S. 510 
(1925), the Supreme Court ruled that parents have a right to educate 
their children in private schools. But nobody concludes that the 
rights that these cases protect prohibit states from policy decisions 
encouraging public education. And nobody claims that the right of 
parents to privately educate their children creates an entitlement to 
have that private education funded by the government. 
As these examples illustrate, the controversy over stem cells 
should be seen as one among many political battles over the 
allocation of limited federal funds. It is distinguished not by the 
presence of moral principles, or the presence of moral principles on 
both sides, but by the particular moral principles at stake, the 
absoluteness with which they are vrielded, and the intensity of the 
passions their defense provokes. 
V. Conclusion 
When the question of federal funding is placed in perspective, it 
can be seen that the common objections to the President's policy on 
stem cell research are misplaced. 
First, by withholding federal funding for research that involved 
the creation of new embryos or the future destruction of embryos, the 
President did not effectively ban embryonic stem cell research. His 
August 2001 decision for the first time provided federal funding for 
stem cell research, and it permitted private individuals and 
companies to pursue it. 
PRE -PUBLICATION VERSION 
