I dread each impending gathering of my family. I say aloud to myself, "No politics, no religion," trying to hypnotize myself into remembering to hold my tongue with my siblings, most of whom are conservative Republicans.

Stacy Innerst, Post-Gazette Click graphic for larger version.

I am one of 12 kids, and, in the brood I grew up in, there is a dividing line between the liberals and conservatives. My family's differences over politics are similar to the polarization that has occurred in our nation over the Iraq War and the presidential election.

In these disputes, everyone seems to know what side is right.

Among my siblings, who have spread to Virginia, Maryland, eastern Pennsylvania, Seattle, Las Vegas and San Diego, there is a dividing line between left and right that is chronologically based. I was reminded of this a while back when I was talking with my 36-year-old brother Christopher.

"The older kids weren't really home when it all went down," he said, referring to the desolation caused in Pittsburgh by the collapse of the steel industry in the 1980s, during Ronald Reagan's watch. "They were pretty much gone when it was happening."

And while it's true that the liberals are largely confined to the second half of the brood, a few of the younger ones have also become conservative in their thinking, particularly since they've become parents.

We liberals are a scrappy bunch, and when the conservatives follow my late father's example in loudly voicing their political opinions and needling us, we fight back. Even though the youngest of us is 30, the arguments can become so heated that it sometimes seems like we will come to blows.

Across the nation as in our house, rightists grill Kerry for being a "waffler," and leftists call President Bush a draft-dodger. On top of that, there's a simmering resentment of former President Clinton that infects even the Internet. I know this because I'm on the right-wing spam list of my uncle, who is a retired Lutheran minister.

My Uncle Holyman (I call him this with love, as it is his e-mail moniker) is a generous and kind man, but when he sends some of his e-mails I wonder why he is torturing me. He is the younger brother of my father, who was a lifelong Republican who campaigned for Goldwater for president.

When Holyman recently sent me some e-mails with dredged-up quotes from 1998, putting the blame for the Iraq War on the Democrats and Clinton, I begged for mercy.

"How you rightists love to needle me! Though I lean precariously to the left, I am an independent voter, not a Demmycrat," I responded.

The truth is that though I'm no great fan of the Democratic Party, since I was in my teens I've identified with them. It could partly be a reaction to my father's religious conservatism, and it could also be that Christopher is right about our political views being formed during the cooling and dismantling of what were once the world's greatest blast furnaces.

Maybe it had something to do with growing up in working-class Bellevue, but for years I've had this little liberal voice in my head telling me, "The Republicans don't care about the little guy."

I don't entirely believe that statement, but part of me still thinks it rings true. While Pittsburghers were reeling from the Rust Belt Depression that occurred in the 1980s, my father, a laid-off engineer who had worked for U.S. Steel, was a staunch Reagan supporter. Reagan repaid all of the laid-off Republicans and Democrats who supported him by giving them little more than government cheese.

Dad never wanted pity, and I don't either. But simply mentioning that these things happened to us, that these events helped to form our political views, is like calling for "class warfare" from the perspective of some of my conservative siblings.

It wouldn't be so hard to discuss our politics with each other if the liberals in the family weren't so outnumbered by the conservatives. The nation appears to be more evenly divided. Democrats continue to charge Bush with stealing the last presidential election, and Republicans continue to vilify Kerry and ridicule his military service record.

"Kerry wrote himself up for all of his medals, and he's been milking those medals for 30 years," another older brother said to me during a recent family gathering. "He shot himself in the foot for one of those medals, and he only served three months in Vietnam."

When I consider the long-simmering differences between the Right and the Left, I can't help but think of my family, and I think also about the American family. Though many people are aware of the ominous phrase "a house divided," many don't realize that Abraham Lincoln was paraphrasing the Bible when he spoke those words.

The biblical reference comes from the Gospel of Mark, where Jesus was speaking in parables to scribes who were trying to malign him. "How can Satan cast out Satan?" Mark quotes Jesus as saying. "And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand."

With the seemingly immeasurable psychic distance separating conservatives and liberals, the notion of a kingdom asunder rings a familiar and scary chord with most Americans. Amidst all of the roof-raising internecine bickering going on in our country, one is left wondering just how much longer it will be before we begin to disown each other.