re: #320 Liberal Classic

You need not defend your religion. It really doesn’t matter than your interpretation of your faith does not include the death penalties for sinners. The problem does not lie with faith, the problem lies with religious governance. The problem is under theocractic rule there is no standard of human behavior that is “good enough”. Simply adequate never measures up to perfection, and so there will always be this pressure to push for more rules and stronger laws enforcing moral behavior. There is a history of religious persecution and violence in this country, and it can “happen here”. The only thing stopping it from happening here is a tradition of secularism that makes acceptable different standards of behavior. There are some who claim this is “moral relativism” but in reality it is simply a general agreement that the laws we have are “good enough for government work” and constitute standard by which a reasonable person may be judged by his peers. Without our tradition of secularism, Christian puritan ethic could run amok just as easily as Islamic puritanism.

If the far right can’t even sweep the elections in Texas, then it will not “happen here”. I do not begrudge your concerns - through vigilance we will keep our state out of our churches and our churches out of our states. But I do wish to remind you that the evidence points to a great many believers (of all stripes) who have no wish to commingle church and state.