What is Seperation of Church and State ?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It means that there is a clear line between holding faith-based views and serving in office and getting into office to put into place a calculated, deliberate effort to revolve the nation's laws around your own particular religious ideology.

The idea that anyone would run for office and proclaim that they are a "Christian", or a "Jew", or a "Muslim", or a "Buddhist", etc. is to me violating that line.  Republicans want to be a religious fundamentalist party - they want to broadcast their religion so that everyone knows that they're going to enact laws that are based on their interpretation of the Bible.  What about the Christians that they represent that don't believe in those ideas, or the religious minorities, or the nones that do not have any religion at all?

I think it's so strange that we don't have the same tolerance for candidates that would go out there and put on their campaign websites: "Pro-life.  Pro-family.  Pro-Allah."  or "Buddha and Country"... I don't believe conservative Christianity should have any kind of right to claim dominance to this nation anymore than any other religion should.

We've all been conditioned to accept that much of the country's politics revolve around fundamentalist ideas - but it's not acceptable and in my opinion it's very far from what this country is about.  This is not only a Christian country or a conservative Christian country and that's the message that the Republican Party wants to constantly push.

If someone wants to say that they are a Proud Bhuddist Democrat and their values come from Bhuddism, would you allow them to speak ?

Yes.  I might even vote for them, depending on what their "values" were, as well as specific issue positions.

Buddhism isn't a religion, actually; it's a philosophy.  While I wouldn't encourage someone to try this, one can be a Buddhist and a Christian at the same time.

This is a common misconception in the West, one that unfortunately is enabled by a lot of Western Buddhist teachers. As practiced in most parts of Asia Buddhism is clearly a religion and, as much respect and admiration as I have for it, one whose tenets are subtly but deeply incompatible with those of Christianity.

You might, however, be interested to know that orthodox Buddhism is generally almost as opposed to abortion as orthodox Christianity is, although the concept of sin and where the line is drawn between actions that are merely discouraged and those that are flatly inadmissible are different.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The government can't tell religious orgs what to do (within reason). Religious doctrine cannot be used to craft government policy.

This is an absurd standard and it's horrifying that liberals seem to have internalized it.

What specifically do you object to? Why should others be able to force their religious beliefs down our throat by legislating it?

For the standard to be juridically enforceable there would need to be an objective yardstick for when a policy position is inherently religious versus when it simply happens to correlate strongly with certain religious commitments (as opposition to abortion does with Catholicism, or GMO skepticism does with various "granola" New Age and pagan currents). I don't think developing that yardstick and giving it the force of constitutional law is either possible or desirable, and I assume Xahar doesn't either.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The government can't tell religious orgs what to do (within reason). Religious doctrine cannot be used to craft government policy.

This is an absurd standard and it's horrifying that liberals seem to have internalized it.

What specifically do you object to? Why should others be able to force their religious beliefs down our throat by legislating it?

For the standard to be juridically enforceable there would need to be an objective yardstick for when a policy position is inherently religious versus when it simply happens to correlate strongly with certain religious commitments (as opposition to abortion does with Catholicism, or GMO skepticism does with various "granola" New Age and pagan currents). I don't think developing that yardstick and giving it the force of constitutional law is either possible or desirable, and I assume Xahar doesn't either.

If religious doctrine inspires lawmakers to enshrine those values into law, it is by definition, forcing their religious beliefs on everyone else. That should not be acceptable in a liberal democracy.

Sure, but who determines when lawmakers are doing that, and what standard do they use to determine it? How controversial does a doctrine have to be? Most Americans perceive, for instance, draconian abortion restrictions as obviously religiously motivated in a way that's difficult to get past, but what about similarly stringent and moralistic drug laws, or very popular and widely accepted legislation like the Civil Rights Act that happened to be lobbied for in a way that included repeated religious appeals (remember what the first C in SCLC stands for)? Rick Santorum is Catholic and Rick Perry is Methodist; the Catholic Church's official teaching on abortion is famously strict and absolute, whereas that of the United Methodist Church is traditionally much vaguer. Would an abortion restriction that Santorum voted for in the US Senate be an unacceptable imposition of the positions of Santorum's religion on the public, while an abortion restriction that Perry signed into law as Governor of Texas wouldn't be?