Freedom of religion? Religious tolerance? What are these things....
When it comes to religion, I always try to be respectful of other's beliefs. I think your faith is your own business and should be a very personal and private thing. Some folks need it, others do not and it is the latter that people tend to forget. I don't know how much more of this I can take. I am sick hearing about our president and the red state republicans (political evangualists if you will) talk so openly about god and basing public policy agendas on their faith....this is enabling the rest of the reglious right to cause even more chaos and pushing 'we're right you're wrong' christian attitude onto those who choose not to be christians. On NPR today, I was listening to the debate that has rekindled in Kansas over whether or not to teach evolution in public schools. Five years ago the school board stacked with very consertative members, elected to do away with evolution and teach creationism as science but a year later was over turned when more moderates were elected to the board and evolution was reinstated as to our scientific explanation. Now the debate has come back because we re-elected god's other son as our current president and now Kansas wants to do away with teaching evolution and teach 'intelligent design'...which is basically creationism 2.0. They are saying the intelligent design is based on some nucleo tide that proves we could not have evolved but were simply created by a higher power (aka god), but the people who introduced this intelligent design theory does not want to put it through the scientific tests to have it certified, rather they want the school board to simply allow it to be taught in place of evolution. The lady/parent was complaining that she believes that gensis is the only real explanation of how humans came to be and the she does not want to have to waster her time 'un-learning' her kids what they learn in school due to the teachings of evolution. My response to this lady is this, take your kids out of public school and put them in a christian school and if you can't afford that, home school them, if you can't do that pray of the money to do that ( ask and ye shall receive) or simply let your kids think of themselves, if religion is right for them, they will find their way back to it as they get older, but when you force religion on to people who don't want it, it causes us to resent it, hate it, not tolerate, never go back to it......for god's sake pratice what you preach and learn what seperation of church and states means.