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Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Freedom from religion.

A memorial of a soldier honoring dead veterans is proper. One on public property honoring only Christian dead veterans is not. Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Nativists and atheists who served and died should not be disrespected or accorded any lesser honor for their sacrifice of life. Death in war has no bias in who is claimed or spared. Only a bigot would contend Christian dead veterans are "special." Among Christians they can exchange their iconography, Saints, the Virgin, the Passion of the Cross, the Sacred Heart, Papal infallibility, dreadlocks and herb, commandment stones, whatever; but to intrude such stuff on others in a public place is both presumptuous and unconstitutional.

Some, based on a claim of faith or motivated otherwise, wish to intrude into the lives and liberties of others. To interfere in the reproductive decisions of families and to constrain liberty of patients in doctor-patient consultation and the provision of wanted medical services, be it contraception or abortion, assisted suicide, transgender surgery, conversion therapy, or any other elective procedure desired by the patient. Things which an individual doctor may freely refuse a patient should not be refused as a matter of law.

Likewise, the same people want to dishonor my basic freedom from religion.

As bad, is to hold my freedom hostage to Hobby Lobby unfairness; for profit corporations being incapable of religion aside from capitalism's profit seeking under the rules, while religion itself is personal to humans. Only absolute idiots would assert otherwise, and five have. I do not want a Minnesota Attorney General of that ilk.

Independent of any relationship abuse which may or may not have happened, Kieth Ellison does not have a corrosive, intrusive worldview that way. As a Muslim he knows protecting rights to his faith requires protection of the rights of those professing no faith, a different religious faith, or a faith in science and logic over superstition.

Diversity of the mind is an inherently solid benefit of a truly cultured and free society. Have your myths, dietary codes, etc., but do not aim to constrain my liberty to not embrace them. Church is church. State is State. The founders in the First Amendment wanted to not have any established religion of one part of the population intruding into the thoughts and values of others. They founded the nation that way. By writing the First Amendment that way; i.e., expressly without any established religion imposed, compelled or unfairly boosted in any fashion by the State.