Rootus
Officially Addicted
If you are going to play word games, then yes, it all comes down to morals. I do believe, however, that we all get the jist of what ChrisWeil is trying to say.WaterPog said:Carefull there, you're making a moral argument and you don't even realise it
It's far from semantics, it's the essence of law. NOT ALL PEOPLE THINK THAT KILLING IS BAD, that's what you have to grasp. NOT ALL PEOPLE THINK THERE IS SUCH A THING AT "general human rights".
You're taking your set of morals and assuming that they are the standard, it's a common falicy and just coincidently happens to be the one you're acusing the president of.
Perhaps better would be to talk about "morals" that have to do with actions that do not affect the person with the belief. For example, lets say you think that gay sex is immoral. By your definition, this is the same as saying that murder is immoral. However, there is a obvious difference: two consenting adults having gay sex have no effect on anybody but themselves. It may disgust you, but that in itself does not make it an appropriate target of legislation. Murder, on the other hand, has a very obvious affect on you, and so it should be governed by law.
This is what I think most people are referring to when they complain about religious morals becoming entangled with government.
At the risk of getting off onto a tangent...WaterPog said:It also has nothing to do with separation of church and state (which I would also defy you to find defined anywhere in the founding papers of our country, but that's a whole other topic).
You are referring to the Establishment Clause, which is part of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1791: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" We say "separation of church and state" today, which originates from a phrase Thomas Jefferson used, "wall of separation between church and state," in an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association.
That letter, along with the U.S. Constitution, counts as founding papers to me. Not that it matters when it was written of course, the Constitution is the Constitution now matter what part you look at, or when it was written.
Dave