Celebrating Twice As Hard

HAPPY RELIGIOUS FREEDOM DAY! This great American holiday takes place on January 16 every year, and MLK Day does not, so we're just lucky to have two great American holidays coincide. And, its a doubly bad day for Christian conservatives, because Martin Luther King was a radical liberal, hated by the Christian right during his lifetime. Religions Freedom Day affirms the great truth that the United States of America is not a "Christian Country:, nor was ever intended to be, but rather, a country of religious freedom, meaning diversity. Our nation's framers were mostly deists, sons of the scientific enlightenment. Jefferson wrote the statute for religious freedom in 1777, not long after he wrote the Declaration of Independence. He intended it to guarantee religious freedom for the State of Virginia, and thanks to James Madison it became part of Virginia's constitution in 1786, on January 16, where it remains to this very day. Our conservative Christian colleagues must accept and understand the fact that when one opens a business, he or she enters into a social compact with the public, to serve the public, without discrimination on account of sex, race, religion, or age. Refusing to sell a gay couple a wedding cake on religious grounds is not freedom of religion, it is imposing one's religious values on others. Suppose a Muslim or Jew walks into your cake shop, and you refuse to serve him. That's illegal, discrimination on religious grounds. Same thing, even if the refusal to serve is based on your religious grounds, rather than the customer's. Its illegal discrimination. In America, civic society is secular, there is no established official public religion, and civil rights are secular rights. We should never have the freedom to impose our religious views on anyone, nor discriminate against anyone on account of our own religious values. Martin Luther King didn't like being excluded because he was black. Had he been gay, he probably would have felt the same way.