In my personal opinion, this statement is about the truest thing said in this whole thread. Unfortunately, for religious/irreligious people alike their beliefs are the premises by which they view right and wrong, and this influences what the state views as legal/illegal...

I'll confess that there are days when I wish I were built in such a way that I could adopt some religion. I think it could make it a lot easier to construct a personal moral philosophy out of some fundamental building blocks. Of course, that cuts both ways and there are folks who draw on some building blocks that I find pretty scary.

To Laura's point, I don't know if church and state can ever be totally separate, but that seems like almost a semantic distinction. What I do know is that if I place the country in which I reside on the "Netherlands-Saudi Arabia Church-State Separation Scale" I am so happy that we are much closer to Holland! (OK, somebody shoot me if I haven't picked the right countries for the poles ofthis scale...)

I'm sure there probably isn't a person on this board who doesn't have at least on major qualm with some state sanctioned law based on his or her beliefs.

I'd agree, though I'll also confess, as I think my last comment suggested, to feeling some disadvantage of not having religious/supernatural/institutional underpinning to those beliefs. They are I guess secular and along the lines of "I believe people should have health care" and "I believe the war on drugs is a waste of time." Not very awe-inspiring, eh? Often not as black-and-white as I'd like. Oh, well. I guess I do have some hard-core beliefs that are residuals of Christian tradition like "Though shalt not kill".

The best the state can do is not throw people in jail for observing their own beliefs and practices and beyond that I suppose majority rules.

That sounds pretty good ...so long as correct observation of those beliefs doesn't involve shooting folks or pouring poison gas in the subway!!