I Gotcher Religious Liberty Rightcheer!

[MineralMan]

Here in the United States, people have religious liberty. What that means is that everyone has the liberty to believe any damn thing they wish to believe and are able to believe. They have the liberty to get together with others who manage to be able to believe the same thing or close enough to it to keep from getting in fist fights over it.

They even have the liberty to try to convince others that what they believe makes sense in some way and to collect money to build churches and the like. They have the liberty to believe in one deity, three deities in one, a whole wagon load of deities or no deities at all. Nobody really cares what you believe. Everyone believes whatever it is they believe, including you.

Religious Liberty comes with a responsibility to respect others' liberty to believe some different stuff and to do all of the things that come with their own liberty. It also comes with a responsibility to leave people who aren't causing you any actual physical harm alone with their own beliefs, inborn characteristics, desires, and habits. If they aren't hurting you in a real, definable way, it's none of your damned business. You can believe whatever the hell you want to believe or are able to believe, but you can't tell other people what they should believe or how they should manage their philosophy or lives.

Religious liberty's guarantee also prohibits you from trying to force other people to follow the various and sundry rules you think your religious beliefs require. Here in the United States, when enough people think a rule should be made to stop people from harming each other, like to keep people from killing each other or stealing other people's shit, we pass laws prohibiting such activities. Your religious rules apply only to you and to those who can believe whatever it is you believe. They are not laws. Nobody else has to pay any attention to your religious rules in any way.

The whole religious liberty thing can be expressed very simply in four words (well five): Mind Your Own Damned Business.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Thomas Jefferson said:

"The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. ... Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error."

The 'baggers would do well to remember this.

[MineralMan]

2. As always, Jefferson says it better than I do.

He's too damned polite about it, though.

[napkinz]

3. they use their religion as "a cloak for prejudice" ...

[MineralMan]

4. So they do. It isn't religious liberty they want,

it's religious tyranny. And that's nowhere in our Constitution.