Alright, damnit.

I'm going to get this to work, this religion/politics intersection. I am. Maybe.

I'm going to try, anyway. And this one is posting, even if it doesn't go exactly like I think. At least I'll have said SOMETHING, and that gives me something to edit or whatever. Right? Right.

There are tendencies that people follow, usually from their religion to their politics, though sometimes the other way around. Hence there are stereotypes that are believed.

Right wing - Catholic, Lutheran, Jew, Baptist, Mormon, most of the other Christian flavors.

Left wing - Buddhist, Hindu, various pagan flavors, agnostics/atheists.

And if you don't fit where you "should"? If you're a conservative pagan or a liberal Mormon? Wow. People kinda flip out.

I'm starting to run into this personally. Like I said at the beginning of this, I was Democrat for a long time and Independent the last 5 or 6 years. And now, with my self-education and actual thinking brain, I'm starting to lean more right of center. Not on everything, but I'm pretty sure a conservative label would stick at this point. As a pagan, this makes other pagans sometimes look at me funny. And there are some that have gotten positively strident - not at me (yet), but at a pagan friend who has been conservative a lot longer than I have. *waves at T*. Which is weird, considering that most pagans (even those strident ones) claim to be exceedingly tolerant. Unless you're right-wing/conservative/whatever label you prefer.

OK, so where am I going with this? Assumptions, stereotypes, tendencies...and sometimes they go haywire. When this happens, you get people wanting to force religion-based rulings down your throat, or people who want religion to be kept far far away and quote the "Constitutional right to a separation of church and state". Which of course makes me laugh, as that is NOT in the Constitution (read it yourself, there's a link at the bottom of this page!). The reference comes from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists Association in 1802.

Both angles are wrong. You don't get to decide my moral values for me. And I promise that a Nativity scene on city property does not mean you are going to be frogmarched to the nearest church and forced to be baptized.

The simple fact that some people miss is that YES, this country was founded on basic Judeo-Christian principles and that J-C still holds a majority of people (I believe). The founders worked very hard, though, to make sure that there would BE no forcing, no state religion. This does NOT mean that politicians are meant to check their religion at the door. You have to expect some sort of crossover. Most Catholics are going to vote against abortion. Most atheists are going to vote for...I don't know...liquor stores to be open on Sunday. Whatever. What we SHOULD expect is for them to be able to keep the Constitutional laws separate from their religion. As long as they can do that, I'm willing to entertain them voting for other things along their moral lines.

I hope that all makes sense. I'm not sure I made a decent point, but my house is chaos at the moment and I can't hammer at it any more. So there.