Dave said sometime earlier:
a brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular and a passive, or even active, hostility to the religious.

One of the problems we are facing is that many religious people assume there is a hostility to religion in situations where there is no such hostility. Wanting to not have scriptures on the courthouse walls is not hostility and does not imply any such hostility. It just means that the rest of us don't want your religion enshrined on our halls of justice. Most of us have great respect for your and eveyone else's religions. Perhaps you ought to try to relax your defensiveness muscle.

What seems to be missing is any respect from you for all of us who are not relgious or who are not Judeo-Christian. How would you like to live in a country that guaranteed you equal rights under the law based on religion but then had scriptures from one religion -- a relgion that is guilty of extreme excesses within curent society -- posted on the wall of the building you went to for justice?

I'll ask a couple of questions I asked earlier and never got any response to:

Why isn't it good enough for you to practice your religion at home and in your church?

Why, being an American, don't you want to leave the courthouse walls alone??

OK, I've also said this before: quoting the writings of the founding fathers is pointless. It doesn't sway anyone. It doesn't matter what they thought. It's a waste of your time and my bandwidth. Stick to the point. Don't go off the deep end trying to prove that relgion is OK. Of course it is, and no one has said otherwise. We all know that the founding fathers were mostly Christian. So what?

Also, the Supreme Court didn't rule on scripture on courthouse walls in 1963. You have jumped from the specific to the general. Please don't take this issue to be a general assault on religion. It's really not. Churches are still there, and still beautiful. Prayers are still heard everywhere. People still preach to those around them without getting arrested. Bible hasn't been banned, and won't be. Try to get some perspective. We're only asking for one seemingly obvious thing. You seem to be investing it with lots meaning that's not there.

John Peekstok