The establishment clause of the 1st amendment is the most poignant one to most of your questions.
This means that no government body or agent should promote one religion over another, or compel any person to participate in religious rites or rituals. It doesn't mean that no one should have to hear about religion in the public sphere, or that people cannot perform their own religious rites where they please.
Having religious iconography on public property is allowed, so long as the same rules apply to all religious iconography. So if the Ten Commandments are put up, the government is not compelled to put up all other religious symbols, but the same route should be available to any other group to put up their symbols in the same space. A teacher can talk about their god or atheism, as long as they are merely mentioning it, not proselytizing. And billboards are absolutely private property. And within the laws of propriety, anything can be put on them. (i.e. no porn or swear words.)
I don't buy the freedom from religion thing. People are religious, they have to right to be religious. Saying 'freedom from religion,' while it means one thing for us (no government involvement, no one should be compelled to be religious) it means another thing for religious people (we're trying to outlaw religion.) I think the idea is that everyone is different, and no one should have another person's views respected or established more than theirs.
The Constitution Wrote:Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
This means that no government body or agent should promote one religion over another, or compel any person to participate in religious rites or rituals. It doesn't mean that no one should have to hear about religion in the public sphere, or that people cannot perform their own religious rites where they please.
Having religious iconography on public property is allowed, so long as the same rules apply to all religious iconography. So if the Ten Commandments are put up, the government is not compelled to put up all other religious symbols, but the same route should be available to any other group to put up their symbols in the same space. A teacher can talk about their god or atheism, as long as they are merely mentioning it, not proselytizing. And billboards are absolutely private property. And within the laws of propriety, anything can be put on them. (i.e. no porn or swear words.)
I don't buy the freedom from religion thing. People are religious, they have to right to be religious. Saying 'freedom from religion,' while it means one thing for us (no government involvement, no one should be compelled to be religious) it means another thing for religious people (we're trying to outlaw religion.) I think the idea is that everyone is different, and no one should have another person's views respected or established more than theirs.
"There remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking." ~Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great
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