Could it be that what you call "the fringe motivations: racists who want a separate evolutionary lineage for each race and creationists who want to abolish any evidence of hominid speciation" -- are not fringe points at all, but your main issue?
You go on:
(And by no stretch am I assigning these motivations to even a majority of those who argue in favor of Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon admixture.
But they are a motivation for some. I did say "fringe"..)
Indeed you did; you call those interested in the origins of race a "fringe". I prefer to call the origins of race a central issue in human anthropology.
-- The Multiregional Model, as Milford Wolpoff presents, is a rational hypotheses, far from a fringe study. -- And I see a Neanderthal "admixture" as an important addition to Wolpoff's theories on racial origins.
We need to discuss 'race', not put it in a closet, seeing we're on the edge of a racial/religious world war.
My views are so strong because I think that the evidence is so contrary to the notion of Cro-Magnon/Neanderthal admixture. I am actually an agnostic when it comes to the question of Homo sapiens/Homo erectus admixture over in Asia. That is because I am unaware of such a strong arrangement of evidence contrary to that notion. In fact, I think it's quite plausible that it happened.
So no, I do not reject the notion of admixture automatically simply because I have a problem with the notion on some ideological grounds or whatever. I just think that in the case of Neanderthals the evidence is so glaring against. And riddle me this: if Europeans are descendents of Neanderthals, then why the heck do we have less prominent brow ridges and higher foreheads than other races??
And might I add that I wouldn't have the slightest problem embracing the notion of Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon admixture if evidence to support it were presented. Show me the money! As I said before, "because they were there" just doesn't cut it for me.
And now it really is my bedtime! (I keep erratic hours.) If there's anything more, I'll have to get to it later.
PS. And very quickly, one reason that I'm less inclined to reject the posited admixture in Southeast Asia is because it would've happened at a far earlier stage of Homo sapiens development, and because the archaeological record of that milieu is far more fragmentary.
In short, my point is that by typical standards of identifying and labelling species I very strongly believe that if Neanderthals were discovered today with all that we know of them they would be labeled a separate species. And my strong personal view, to be sure, is a cognitive view, not an emotional view. It is my assessment of how hominid species are distinguished and identified.