There are two general arguments people make when people sue to have the Ten Commandments removed from a court house or government building near you:
- This country (or state) was founded on Judeo-Christian values and we should recoginze this fact as a foundation of our government and do away with this whole separation of church and state business.
- This is an issue of free speech and religious free speech is being attacked.
For the first argument we may be in a situation where 2 + 2 = 5 because enough people vote for it. If you truly believe #1 then you should agree that we need a constitutional amendment saying that we have no separation of church and state and the church is X. It’s the same thing. I think if we had an amendment that we are a Christian nation, it might pass. That’s scary as fuck because it destroys one of the things that makes America great: religion is free.
For #2, clearly if this were the issue one solution would be to allow the religious free speech of any religion on government property to an equitible degree. This is hard but not impossible. No one is proposing it. The people that want the 10 Commandments on the lawn of the court house want it there because they agree with the religion. They are making a secular decision based on religious arguments. I am still apalled that Judeo-Christians are so willing to trample the separation of church and state. For religion to remain free, the state has to be utterly impartial. We are a secular state, folks, regardless of our origins and everyone, Christians included, want the separation of church and state. If you want your religion to stay free, you have to feverishly support the separation of church and state. I’m sorry to say that means the statue of your religious document has to be put somewhere else. Put it in your front yard, put it on your business property, put it anywhere you want except on our public property.
I still have trouble seeing how the definition of a secular state is limited to being a government dedicated to removing all references to God. I think you are being a bit inflexible on this point and I do not think you could get anything near a majority of voters or the founding fathers to agree with your definition.
Also I do not think toleration of other religions is dependent on a removing all traces of any religion from the government.
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