The Separation of Church and State

[rjh4 is back]

James Madison was the primary framer of the First Amendment (Jefferson was ambassador to France at the time but Albert never lets facts interfere with his rants.)

Madison noted:

Madison's summary of the First Amendment:

Congress should not establish a religion and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contary to their conscience, or that one sect might obtain a pre-eminence, or two combined together, and establish a religion to which they would compel others to conform (Annals of Congress, Sat Aug 15th, 1789 pages 730 - 731).

This is why the government needs to keep any of your xtian shit out of public life. You bastards can't be trusted.

I think you are misreading the quote and, therefore, taking something from it that was never intended. You focused on "or that one sect might obtain a preeminence" and isolated it from everything else. From reading the sentence it seems to me that the part highlighted by you should be put in the full context of "or that one sect might obtain a pre-eminence, or two combined together, and establish a religion to which they would compel others to conform" as I think this is the full thought. Neither the constitution nor this quote from Madison says that Christians, or any religious person, cannot or should not participate in government nor is there any indication that in participating in government, one should not bring along with them their convictions of what is right and wrong and make laws accordingly, assuming they do not otherwise conflict with the constitution. Everyone who participates in government brings along with them their personal beliefs, desires, etc. You included. So if the majority of people, or more particularly their representatives, think something should be a law, that is how it is. If we don't like those laws, our recourse is to try to convince a majority. Maybe you just want to exclude Christians so a majority of those left would think like you.