Separation of Church and Signs

Do you also oppose secular advertising? If not, then why not? Who decides what is religious and what is not?
I am personally sick of the secular moralism and violence shoved down our throats every day. It's a religion of theft, war, deceit ...and even bad movies/nauseating song lyrics.
But let's not blind ourselves to any idolatry with a half-way stand on principle.
The issue of church-state separation isn't an issue of church and state. The issue is authority denied by our constitutional system of governed government.
Politicians are authorized to do very few things; that's what leaves us freedom. And if there's anything the USA had proven in years past, it's that freedom works better than the alternative.
Government has no authority to advertise anything. Why not leave it at that?

Being on the side of the ACLU is not something to be proud of (most of the time). They are a very one sided organization, barely coming to the defense of religion when they have a right under the Constitution that is being violated.

It's usually only when the seculars or hard core leftists are under attack. They never stick up for the second amendment for instance or how about transnationalism with cap and trade? We will no longer be sovereign.....I do not hear a peep from the ACLU about this....and that is a bigger violation of our Constitution than tax payers paying for a sign.

This is why I left the Libertarian Party....it has become a joke. They are so focused on trying to get liberals to see that "we are not like Republicans" that they sacrifice their values for votes....just like our other two parties.

Sad, very sad.

You're right in one regard Andrew. The government should not be funding speech, religion, the press, or assemblies of people. Those things are all fine when done in public using private money. When public money is involved, none of those things should be sponsored unless it is a forum that is not in any way regulated by any government official.

The "No more speech, assembly, or petition" comment is completely asinine, unless you're talking about those that are publicly funded, then that's fine to do away with them. A typical conflation found in this "debate." It's nice to see people like the author of this article who have a functional capacity for logic and theory.

You want to use public money to advertise your church bake sale, then I get to use it to advertise the local Bacchanalia. The knife cuts both ways, and most of the rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth fundamentalists are not willing to share with others the same power that they so lust for themselves.

As a former military officer and reader of the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and other founding documents, I need to say my peace and give you some food for thought. I sent this to Pat Dixon but feel it like on any other politician’s ears; it will ring deaf on them.

Our founding documents…

Read them and count how many times “God” is written on these
“Government” documents. Separation of Church and state means you do not let the church control the state or the state control the church be it of whatever religion; it’s not the exclusion of religion from government but its control of it.

He (and possibly you for linking his article) is falling for a false atheistic approach and a deliberate misleading interpretation of the separation.

Taken from the Wikipedia for the sake of argument: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_church_and_state)

Reflecting a concept often credited in its original form to the English political philosopher John Locke [3], the phrase separation of church and state is generally traced to the letter written by Thomas Jefferson in 1802 to the Danbury Baptists, in which he referred to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution as creating a “wall of separation” between church and state. The phrase was quoted by the United States Supreme Court first in 1878, and then in a series of cases starting in 1947. This led to increased popular and political discussion of the concept.

This was an opinion or “concept” of one of the founding fathers, not an amendment or law. If this was to have been adopted by the continental congress, they would have put it into the amendments and they did not! They did not agree on this and neither should we accept the view of one dissenting man as fact even if it is Jefferson. He is after all a man and subject to being wrong like any other. We do not have this anywhere in the constitution and it should have never been applied to law.

I found the opinion stated here to be arbitrary -- if the local government provided small religious announcements to all faiths as a service to the community, what is the problem?

Second - the writer is a bad Libertarian for not noting that the constitution does not make any reference to separation of church and state.

It DOES say that

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

Rather than side with the ACLU (a bad idea -- I agree with the previous commentor) and make religion taboo, why not promote the free and even exchange of religious ideas among all groups? Maybe we'd learn something from each other in the process.

And by the way, when someone prays to Jesus because they believe as a Christian, they are freely exercizing there faith, just as a Muslim prays to Allah, and a jewish person to Jehovah. No one should apologize for it.

Lastly -- Congress prays at the opening of every session. This started with our founding fathers. You wanna have an idea of what they viewed proper separation as, take that into account.

Thanks.