We are a
country of laws based on freedoms guaranteed by our constitution; and sometimes
it takes the courts to reexamine our laws and put us back in compliance.
The Supreme Court’s
ruling that freedom to marry is a basic right of all American citizens also
reaffirmed a second point: that any one person’s or group’s religious beliefs cannot
be dictated as the basis of law for the entire country.
The First Amendment
to the Constitution guarantees an individual’s basic right to worship, or not
worship, as he or she pleases - free from government dictate; but it also
guarantees that the government shall not enact any law based on one group’s
religious doctrine and impose such doctrine on all American citizens.
Every time I
hear a politician invoking his religious belief (or the Bible) as the basis for
or against a proposed or standing law or ruling I cringe.
The First Amendment to the Constitution
states plainly: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…
It has always been touted that the Pilgrims
came to the ‘new world’ seeking the freedom of religion; but the reason for
their migration was to flee from a nation mandating a specific religion’s doctrine
as law – a freedom from mandated religion.
Unfortunately
many fundamentalist Christian sects in the United States would see this country
as a Christian theocracy and impose their beliefs and bigotry and prejudices as
the law of the land; and for a long while our Citizens have been endanger by a
movement of radical, mostly Republican, legislatures aimed on enacting a form
of Christian Sharia Law and declaring this country a Christian nation.
The Court’s
ruling today was based on the Constitutional premise of equality of the law;
but it also reaffirms the First Amendment - that all persons in our Nation have
a right to their religious beliefs and to worship as they please; but they do
not have the right to inflict through legislation their personal religious doctrine
on the public at large.
Congress shall make no law respecting
an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people
peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of
grievances
the Ol'Buzzard
