There was a piece in USA Today on Sept. 9th, and I thought THIS paragraph was especially interesting (it pertained to the idiot burning the Koran) BUT it ALSO applies to gay rights and gay marriage.
WHAT OUR FOREFATHERS REALLY SAID ABOUT RELIGION AND OUR GOVERNMENT
Real religious freedom extends liberty to those whose opinions we do not share. In the 1770s, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison insisted that even the long-persecuted evangelical Baptists of Virginia should have full religious liberty, which their state achieved in 1786 with the passage of Jefferson's Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom. But neither Jefferson nor Madison much liked the evangelicals' intense faith, which Jefferson for one saw as religious fanaticism. Jefferson in particular knew that if the government persecuted evangelicals for their beliefs, it might persecute anyone (including skeptics like himself). So religious liberty, for the Founding Fathers, granted freedom to worship but did not require cheery approval of every church's views or actions.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-09-09-kidd09_ST_N.htm?csp=DailyBriefing
No comments:
Post a Comment