let's talk about that. let's talk about facts people may not like. let's talk about the fact that many founders weren't christians, and that goes beyond the people who wrote or signed any document. thomas paine, the man who essentially started the revolution, was a deist.

and just about everyone in colonial times would claim to be part of a particular church or faith because saying you were an atheist was about a step away from being declared a witch and being burned at the stake in many parts. and the ones who didn't burn ya, would find some other way to eliminate your presence. there were a lot of colonials who didn't want to be "next" if they said the wrong thing.

so many of them declared themselves as unitarians, or congregationalists, which would later merge with the unitarians. the unitarians are not just some protestant sect. the unitarians don't believe in christ's divintity. that in itself makes them "non-christians." i could go on, but at the end of the day, the fact remains that unitarianism is not a christian sect in the sense that we think it is. and we know today that many people signed up as a unitarian cause that was the only church they could hide their lack of faith in and avoid public ridicule, harrassment or worse.

that is why these people did not want us to be a "christian nation" from the standpoint that the christian churches had any influence on the government. they knew our government needed to be secular and serve the citizens, not God. it was their view that if God was truly just and righteous, he would agree with that. not the other way around where we are reduced to doing the bidding of whomever is the most influential church at any given time and all citizens are forced to serve their "holy" agenda.

it is not the seperation of church and state people who twist and nitpick and deny inconvenient truths, it is the loud minority of people who want life to go back to the 1950's and use the founders as some sort of justification for that by using metephoric and literary references to God as if they had some intent of "christianizing" our nation.

Well, sorry; it's habit.

That's not why I do it....to force my point; I do it so I can better see it to read what I wrote when I come back to reply to subsequent comments. I did agree to reduce the font, but then found myself squinting a little and leaning closer to the monitor, to read what I'd written. Must be time for new glasses. My apologies; I'll go back to the smaller font as you request.

Anyway.....



I agree with this, but they did acknowledge the existence of the Judeo-Christian deity; His influence is noted and even mentioned in our founding documents. The Declaration refers to "the Laws of nature and nature's God", and that we are "endowed by our Creator"---with a big "c". The Constitutional Convention was opened with prayer, as is every session of Congress on down to city and town councils to this day.
You, and they, can't have it both ways; either you're going to acknowledge and invoke a wise, just and all-powerful deity, or you're not.

thomas paine and others never did.



metephoric and poetic references are hardly what you twist them into. einstein used to make those sorts of references and evangelicals still use his quotes as if they meant something. they didn't, he was an athiest. but unlike the founders, he could admit it without fear of being burned at the stake.



i think they would be appauled at the way religious zealots are trying to twist their words into an endorsement of religion or wanting it mixed in their government in any way.



and before that only wealthy pregnant women could afford to have an illegal abortion, which were performed regularly as to not screw up that priveledged child's life.

stop acting like abortions didn't happen before Roe v Wade...they did,,,and they did with great frequency and no emotional support whatsoever. all that changed with roe v wade was that poor women could now afford them from an actual doctor, just like the rich kids, instead of the "coat hanger in the alley" method of their class.




lol...and the courts are not a rubber stamp there to do the legislature's bidding. a court interprets the law and rules according to their interpretation. what you want is for them to rubber stamp whatever you can get 51% of the legislature to agree to. that is hardly what our system is about. it is not about "majority rules" all the time, without exception. there are certain things that the majority get to decide, but the minority views must always be protected in our system. the courts serve, often times as that protector.

Sean Conners Posts:

Oh, c'mon Sean, just look legislative history of the First AMendment religion clauses and then at recent history to remind yourself how silly this statement is. Those, for one, who most often twist and nitpick and deny inconvenient truths are none other than secular and atheistic humanists of the AClU. Their hostility in attacking Christianity every chance they get by abusing the much misunderstood Jeffersonian metaphor of the "separation of Church and State" is their ground post for lawsuits.

William Stanmeyer, in "Restoring the Faith of our Fathers" cites the landmark 1947 Supreme Court decision, Everson v. Board of Education. Everson was the first case to list atheism with Christianity as equivalient religious beliefs toward which government must be neutral. This unprecedental judicial and legislative conception of "religious neutrality" has in turn resulted in subsequent civil laws and judicial decisions that every Christian recognizes as contrary to GOd's law and divine justice. To soothe atheism, all Christian prayer was prohibited in schools. The irony and the hypocricy, is today, pubic schools, at tax payer expense, allow special prayer rooms, mats, and the whole nine yards for Muslim students to do their thing. Are the atheists up in arms over this and do the alphabet television channels, ABC, CBS or NBC or National Public Radio ever point this out? Nah!


Sean Conners Posts:

Well, count me IN that "loud minority"...our true legacy of liberty as penned by the 56 Founding Fathers matters to me. I don't like that our freedom, our unalienable rights are being slowly etched away and by that I mean a clear knowledge of right and wrong combined with a fervent love, in the emotional, intellectual and common sense of liberty.

Like it or not, it must be admitted, even tacitly, that the philosophical presuppositions of both the original understanding of the founding documents and the salutary role of Christianity truly matter. It's been shown that in order to retain our freedom of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as laid out in the founding documents, the Christian faith is relevant.

John Adams stressed the importance of virtue. He said, "Our Constituion was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

The Republic contemplated by the Founding Fathers was neither based on secular 'ethics' nor was it an enemy of the churches. Yes, the First Amendment prevented federal government from establishing a national religion, but it did not grant power to that government to interfere in the church state relations decided by the States. Here, the good sense of the people of the states and their right to self-government had to be respected. In this regard, the Founding Fathers and certainly George Washington, welcomed the Christian religion as the primary fount of morality.

i'm not doubting your numbers at all. you seem to assume that people who are pro choice politically are "pro abortion" as if they celebrate that. most people i know who would identify themselves as pro choice personally abhor the procedure as much as you do. it's truly a shame that any woman would not want to bring a new life in to this world.

and yes, the cheaper procedures used by clinics that poor women can afford to go to and other women use as a way to dodge embarrassment use archaic, comparatively brutal procedures. if a woman chooses to pay for it herself, private physicians do use much less carnal methods. but that is not what the issue is about. if everything was about that, most people wouldn't eat hot dogs.

this isn't about the procedures used, because if that was the case, people would protest for better surgical methods, not rally to end the procedure in any way. the gross pictures that we have all seen are merely inflamatory.

i myself am against abortions in most every case. and i wish we lived in a utopia where everything was neat, clean and perfect and there would never be a need for it. i wish fathers or other blood relatives didn't rape their kin. and of course, the rape done by a stranger or trusted friend is no less abomidable. but a zealot might even twist that into a "God's plan" argument. as if it was God's plan to have that innocent get raped so she could perform the miracle of childbirth.

i'm sorry, i won't make that call for the woman. she can choose that herself and i won't judge her for her choice.

i also won't judge her for having one before anyone has shown a meaningful (to me) viability of the fetus. after that, i have a bigger problem with it. but i'm not ready to go out and start punishing them for that...not yet.

and i'm not going to punish a physician from safely and legallly doing the procedure so that girl doesn't to go off and kill herself with a coat hanger in an alley.

and if it comes down to the mom or the baby, i'm going with the mom. and like some of the forementioned examples, like rape and incest, i truly hope those instances are as rare as possible...i wish those circumstances didn't exist, but they do. and the last thing i want is a physician being judged by big brother government in partnership with the roman catholic church and pat robertson in making those decisions with their patient.

as far as the rest go, i always hope that they occur within the 1st trimester. if that choice is going to be made. and i actually would support some tougher regulations on "abortions on demand" beyond that 1st trimester. but the anti abortion crowd is one that won't compromise, and wants to persecute anyone who disagrees with their view on the issue. whenever they win any kind of small victory in the legislature or the courts (where they dont't seem to mind judges "legislating from the bench" when they do it in their favor)they always proclaim it one step towards their ultimate goals.

so, i, as a reasonable thinking individual, err on the side of caution, on the side of liberty for the doctor and their patient, both of which we know are alive and viable. i feel that is consistant with our law. God's law is secondary here. it may be 1st in my personal life, but takes a back seat in the way i want my government operating.

this isn't the total sum of my position...but i've now written about as much as i want to on the subject. it's funny how whenever a discussion about religion and government goes on, it always comes down to abortion. i think that is a bigger point than anyone could make on the actual subject. and i can't believe i got sucked into it again...geeez.

I hear what you're saying and thank you for being open-minded to allow the discussion. You've been around the block and said it yourself that "it always comes down to abortion" when the topic concerns the secularization of the nation, freedoms and inalienable rights according to the Constition. The very same discussion could just as easily be about the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision which forced the state legislatures to legalize homo-sex "marriage". Even Mitt Romney, Gov. at the time, didn't tell them to go jump in the lake...although he squacked somewhat, he enabled that abomination to proceed.

Every state had laws against abortion and homosexuality until quite recently. This is a clear indication that the modern secular liberal view of the First Amendment is a change in the country's understanding of what is meant by freedom of religion.



There are people, based upon religion and taking Scripture seriously, inluding some in Massachusetts upon whom this decision was foisted, who reject these court decisions. We say that if proponents of legal abortion and the homosexual agenda are going to carry the day, it should not be on the basis of the claim that the Constitution mandates their understanding of these issues. That claim is to be challenged at every opportunity and I welcome your providing me the opportunity to do that here.

I would like very much to comment on some of the points you have made in rebuttal to mine, but won't belabor this since you seem to want to put the topic aside.

---Sean

Weeelll....Maybe they never expected that people would get to the point where they would actually debate such an obvious thing as whether or not God is to be lawfully acknowledged.




So, then, maybe we should just jettison everything they saw fit to put in their documents? All those metaphors and that flowery prose about rights to free speech and press and pursuit of happiness and stuff....we maybe we should just ignore that, if we can't assume, from what they clearly all agreed on putting down in writing, that they meant exactly what they said. Hell, maybe they didn't even mean to separate from England! Maybe that was all just "metaphor and poetic reference". Y'think?
And they wouldn't have been burned at the stake by that point in history....you're wearing your "persecution hat" too tight.

One thing that gets me.....when you "secular society" folks get on your horses and charge, you ignore the fact that America was in pretty damn good shape, up until the time we started pushing God out of His proper place. Sure, we had problems and crises; wars and Depressions, disasters and scandals, but as long as we acknowledged God and kept Him in His rightful place in our hearts and culture, the fabric of our society held together. America succeeded and rose in stature, wealth and power.
In the late 50s and early 60s, you got your leftists and liberals in high places, who started the early PC push, putting man and worldly concerns before God, and our society has suffered, and has been fragmenting, ever since. We have societal and family problems now that our grandparents just 50 years ago never would have imagined, because it was before:

---Me

Not to egotistically quote myself, but it's true.

Holy hell, I sure hope that was a biting bit of deep satire, Sean.

If that person is serious, they're sick, man.

Simple as that.

This is an irrational conclusion to my position as stated in my reply # 37.

I've been discussing how the Supreme Court decisions legalizing abortion (Roe V Wade) and homosex "marriage" and how they relate to the topic of the blog,our inalienable First Amendment rights of speech, religion and association.

What I'm against is giving those who practice homosexuality "super rights". Those who engage in homosexuality and their advocates seek what they say are "gay rights". In reality, they are demanding "super rights". Super rights are those priveliges that allow one to override the inalienable rights of other citizens, such as those I stated above.




If you will check, you'll see that the two issues of abortion and homo-sex "marriage" are connected becasue they both became "legal" through Supreme Court decisions. Yur durn tootin' I'm against both. First, because both these evils both make obscene gestures to God, mocking His laws and second, governmentally, because they are both unConstitutional.



Knock, knock Sean. You say, "If they have the same rights.." I'm willing, in fact, I'm asking to be enlightened to the difference between homosexual rights and the rights of everyone else. It seems to me that under the Constitition we all have the same rights as human beings. Homosexual people are human beings, they are US citizens and they get the same rights as all the rest of us do.

The government hasn't infringed upon those lawful rights to marry. Homosexual people can marry anyone of the opposite gender anytime. So, you're saying that the government should somehow change the 2,000 year old institution of lawful marriage between a man and a woman to indulge a few.



WHAT? You lost me on this one.
-------------------------------------------

Sean, I'm not sure if you agree that I could rebut your position in reply # 35 or not...but here goes.







Here you present the "I'm personally opposed to abortion, but we shouldn't legislate my personal values on others as that would be infringing on their rights" argument.

This comes most often from evasive politicians like Catholic hypocrites Rudy Guiliani, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry who want to have it both ways. This is nonsense.

To see the absurdity, apply this same logic to any immoral activity. I'm personally opposed to killing two year olds, but I don't want to impose my personal beliefs or values on others or take away your right to do it.

If we are not to restrain other people legally from doing wrong, then we impose on others the effects of the wrongdoing. In the case of abortion, the effects are felt by the baby, in some cases by the father, and by the mother who is often misled and must suffer the emotional and physical scars for the rest of her life. The effects are also felt by innocent people who are victims of crime spawned by our nation's blatant disrespect for life.

Each side imposes values when you think about it. When pro-abortionists clamour to keep abortion legal, they are imposing their values. Laws favoring abortion impose values on the life of the unborn; while pro-life laws impose values on the liberty of the mother. IN other words, the pro-life side wants to impose continued pregnancy on the mother and then give the child up to adoption, while the pro-abortion side wants to impose death to the baby.

Hmmm, very interesting. I wonder how does the French government treat Muslim women and girls? Are they allowed to wear the full head scarfs to school which is very much a part of their relgious expression of Islam?

No, they can't. Catholics can't wear crucifixes, Jews can't wear the Star of David, and so on. The French State enforces real secularism in relation to religious expression of all kinds. They're very serious about it. The issue of religious influence over the State was one of the reasons behind the French Revolution. They chopped peoples' heads off over it (among other things).



They treat Muslims who are French citizens as French citizens. They treat Muslims who aren't citizens with fear and contempt. The French aren't particularly brave or able (if they were they wouldn't be French) but they do contempt really well. You haven't been properly despised if you haven't been despised by the French. They're also quite good at running away (ask the Germans).

I don't like the French. Or the Germans.

the federal government doesn't issue marriage licenses. so, by unconstitutional, do you mean that you have researched every state's constitution and deemed each and every one of them unconstitutional in issuing any civil union for any same sex couple?