[MD] Theocracy, Secularism, and Democracy

[Steven Peterson]

Hi DMB,


> dmb says:
>
> As luck would have it, we are presently having a national conversation about religious freedom and the legal battles over gay marriage in California constitute a kind of public conversation too. It's interesting that one of the charges made by "ProtectMarriage" against the judge's ruling was that it depicted their supporters as a bunch of bigoted homophobes. In the case of the New York city mosque, the other day I highlighted the gap between the principle and the polls. On one hand there are the Obama quotes in which he says that religious freedom is essential to who we are and then there is the polling data that says nearly 70% of Americans oppose the plan. There was a similarly gap in an article about the court case in California.


Steve:
I don't know if you saw Sam Harris's article on the mosque thing. It
sounds like he would count himself in the 70% though he does not think
legal action should be taken to prevent the building of the mosque. A
lot of those 70% may be right to think it is in bad taste (to put it
mildly) even if it ought to be allowed under the Constitutional right.


http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-08-13/ground-zero-mosque/