United States Constitution First Amendment: 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.
I am not against the first amendment, but it does contain some logical problems. The U.S. Government cannot pass laws to promote a religion. On the other hand free exercise of religion does not contain the problem when free exercise of one religion impinges on other religions or citizens who are not religious. Religions, given the chance, would love to have laws promoting their dogmas. The desire to limit availability contraceptives is largely based on religious belief. Same with abortion. At the state level attempts to pass such laws are going on all the time. Technically this does not prevent a state from establishing a state religion, there have been some (I think Connecticut had one at one time), but as history shows religions really prefer to be exclusive, just look at the Mideast these days, or to European history for Christianity, or to those people promoting TM vigorously. A number of countries do have state religions: State religion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_religion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_religion State religion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_religion A state religion (also called an established religion, state church, established church, or official religion) is a religious body or creed officially endorsed by t... View on en.wikipedia.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_religion Preview by Yahoo Personally I do not desire to be induced to believe in, or pretend to believe in, unproven metaphysical claptrap. Where there is no rationality and possibility of proof, the only means of really securing conformance to a belief, if the gullibility of a population cannot be manipulated, is threat and weaponry. United States Constitution Second Amendment: A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. The only problem with this amendment is the first part 'A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state' which seems to refer to state militias. That is gun control, should it exist, would be under the province of each state under laws concerning a state militia, and this seems to not have worked out mostly; it has had a very spotty past. Theoretically this does not prevent a state from instituting strict gun control laws under the umbrella of a state militia, the federal government may not do this however. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <mdixon.6569@...> wrote : So, you're against the first amendment. I would bet you're also against the second amendment. Any others? BTW, Hobby Lobby only opposed providing two(maybe four) *birth control* drugs and that was because they induced abortion. Their position was that if the government insisted that women have them, then let the government pay for them. They have provided nineteen other birth control drugs through their insurance plans for years. Yet the liberal media and fellow Democrats cry that Hobby Lobby and the Supreme Court are denying women contraception. No, they only say they will not pay for them, get them on your own dime. On Monday, June 30, 2014 2:21 PM, "anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> wrote: 'Today's decision is a victory for religious freedom and another defeat for an administration that has repeatedly crossed constitutional lines in pursuit of big government', said House Speaker John Boehner. Religious freedom is a right we create for ourselves so we can maintain our private and institutional delusional fantasies in the face of empirical and far more demonstrable concepts about reality. Science-based medicine is not based on such fantasies, though it does go through many imaginative false starts and is hardly a completely successful solution to ills. This is in contrast to most alternative or religious medical strategies which are maintained even in the presence of strong dis-confirming evidence as to their effectiveness. Opposition to birth control is basically based on imaginative ideas about what life is and where it comes from and what its value is, but there is no scientific support for such contentions. Nature is pretty efficient and indiscriminate in destroying life forms, and our ideas of right-to-life seem to arise from our own ideas we are somehow special, and also because we have a fear of death even while our religious fantasies promise eternal life in some manner or other.
