It is also important to note that in the example of the current proposed constitutional amendment, there is an attempt to impose the religious standard of marriage upon the civil standard of marriage.

But I would like to suggest that any further discussion of the gay marriage issue be posted to the gay marriage thread, and the faith/religion issues posted to the faith thread.

My purpose for titling this thread secularity vs. religion is because I, and many other reasonable people, are opposed to religion in the public sphere. I had hoped we could have a discussion among secularists who either aren't religious believers, or who will not constantly keep injecting their personal religious beliefs into the discussion.

This is the essence of what I hoped the discussion would be about, from my original post:

"I believe strongly that no nation on earth should be governed using orthodox religion as the main tenet for governance or the rule of law. I believe strongly in the separation of religion and state, and believe we need to go to the next level, which to me is to ban religion from participation in the public square.

I fear society as we know it will be destroyed by religious fundamentalism."

I am not trying to dictate what the conversation is, as all threads do drift. But this thread has become just another religion thread, with those usual suspects (no insult intended) here at Mudcat who identify themselves as Christians and/or conservative traditionalists, no matter how nice they are and how unlike the nasty "fundies" everyone loves to hate they are, attempting to hijack the conversation, and drag it down to the level of yet another thread full of religious diatribes.

I really don't understand why this forum finds it so difficult to allow secularist humanists to hold a conversation, without being beaten over the head by well-intentioned Christian members, who feel (compusively, apparently) that they MUST stand up for their religion here, whenever the discussion is about getting religion out of our public lives.