All right, raytri, I am sorry if I was a bit harsh in my last post, but this is not a subject about which I can remain unemotional. I know that I got the thread off-topic with my attack on the ACLU- so to go back to the original topic- I still haven't received any word from the Christian Coalition regarding the ACLU's defense of Christians.

What about laws that force everybody, regardless of religious preference, to burn incense to the Sun God?

And your post ignores the fact that, nowadays, child porn producers get around the law by using legal adults as models and then using age enhancement software to "rewind" the adult models to "children" ages.

I agree that such practices must be stopped, heikstheo, but I'm trying to get this thread back on topic. What is your opinion about the separation of church and state, heikstheo? Do you think it has gone too far?

The First Amendment says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise of thereof." Historically, the Supreme Court sways between liberal and conservative interpretations of the Constitution (depending on which party has been getting more Supreme Court appointments lately). With the religion clause of the First Amendment, the struggle is between the wall of separation doctrine and the no preference doctrine. And with the separation of church and state, one has to wonder whether we're protecting the state from the church or protecting the church from the state. Clearly, if we try to protect the state from the church, we cannot go to the extent of prohibiting Christians from participating in a democratic government. On the other hand, if we're protecting the church from the state, we can't pass laws ordering everyone to undergo swordpoint conversions to Christianity. The fun part of Constitutional Law classes is when the professor draws up mock cases for the class to argue. The other interesting thing is trying to decide what happens in a particular case if the free exercise clause and the no establishment clause clash.

I personally think that the Constitution forbids only the mandating of religion. In some of the old schoolhouses, prayer was forced, and that is a violation of the proper separation of church and state, but I think that a lack of religion is, in fact, a religion (secularism/humanism). Hence I think that when the Supreme Court forbade school prayer, it violated the Constitution by "establishing" non-religion as the creed of every public school in America. The original intent of the First Amendment was to avoid a corrupt theocracy (such as those in Europe at the time), but there is no danger of that in present-day America. On the other hand, the "free exercise thereof" is gravely in danger, as can be seen not only in the absence of voluntary school prayer but also in the example of Macy's, a former cultural landmark, cowering under pressure and removing the word Christmas from all store windows (which are private property). There are many other examples, as well, some of them so absurd as to be darkly humorous.

I think when government took prayer out of the schools and made non-religion the order of the day, they were basically abandoning the old no preference doctrine. But then comes the question of how one would do a school prayer that would satisfy not only every denomination of Christianity, but Judaism and Islam as well, and not only Southwest Asian ethical monotheistic religions, but any other of so many types of religion as well. So rather than trying to define what would be sufficiently "no preference," they threw up the wall of separation instead. There was an interesting thread at www.degreeinfo.com on a case regarding whether some city council in Virginia was within their rights to forbid a Wiccan prayer at the city council meeting.

As much as I dislike such New Age religions, I wouldn't restrict them in any way.

If you think nudity is automatically "sexual abuse", then we'll have to agree to disagree.

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Man up.

I want to stay on the topic of religious freedom whether we agree on other topics or not, raytri, if only for the sake of the person who started this thread.