An Important Clarification about Religious Mandates

In this paper, I will try to clarify a few things. Please let me know if you find my clarification useful.

*

Under the rule of our two-party system, the federal government has become increasingly paralyzed. None of our two parties is willing to compromise, and none can eliminate the other party on the federal level. Things are different on state level. Some states are red, others are blue. This means that the Democrats are marginalized in red states and the Republicans in blue states.

Because of the federal government’s failure to marginalize one of our two parties and act as if we had a one-party system, the states are making a comeback. The southern states, in particular, are claiming for themselves the rights that they have lost after the Civil War. They want to do what the federal government has become unable to do.

What is disturbing is that the Supreme Court seems to agree with the southern states and is ready to transfer to them the powers to decide about some ethical questions that divide the country. Ideally all those newly acquired freedoms should find their way into the Bill of Rights. But this is not possible today. America is in the process of falling back into medieval obscurantism. This is how I would sum up the feelings of many Democrats.

The other side of the coin

The Republicans are entitled to their ethical views. For them, abortion is murder and only hetero sexuality is moral. I think that in a democratic system we should respect their views. Religious freedom is a most basic freedom in a democracy. This means that we cannot have a state-sponsored religion. Now religion has a corollary. It defines what is ethical and what is not. This means that we must respect those religious views as well. But we cannot have a state-sponsored religious ethic. I repeat, the law must respect those views, but it cannot sponsor them. This is what the right wing of the Supreme Court does not seem to understand, and this is what the red states do not seem to understand.

Summary

People are free to be Christian and to observe the moral rules of their religion. But no political authority at federal, state or local level is authorized to sponsor any given religion or the moral mandates of that religion, when they are rejected by the progressive part of the people.