November 2007
Published November 16th, 2007The hate mail is a riot! It’s also a bit depressing/sad.
But seriously, it’s always a lift when I find a site like yours where I can escape for a little while. I don’t live in Kansas (apologies to Kansas’ non-theists), but it’s still pretty bad here in Huntington Beach.
Here’s hoping for at least the separation of church and state some day, and the theists’ understanding of what that really means.
At least that.
We can hope, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Personally, I think that separation of church and state is being eroded where it’s important but goes too far in some meaningless ways. For example, in some public schools children are essentially not allowed to talk about religion with other students. Since that’s not state-sponsored speech, I don’t think it should be disallowed. I also think that any parent who sends their child to school with pro-religion literature has no right to protest if my child shows up with pro-atheism literature — but that’s not gonna happen, is it?
History Matters on November 18, 2007
Good discussion! I have posted my own blog to try to dispel some of the misunderstanding that exists about “separation of church and state.” I do have a few opinion posts, but most of my posts are just historic facts and quotes by our Founders and other early leaders. Separation of church and state is a metaphor that is so mis-used it has reversed the Founders’ original thinking. But my main point is that “we” are using the First Amendment to justify suppressing actions and words it was not meant to affect. The Overview and Background section of my blog expresses this pretty well.
Let’s get back to talking about what is or is not appropriate rather than misusing the First Amendment to bring lawsuits to prevent actions we don’t agree with.