I was watching some videos on youtube earlier when I saw this video come up on related videos. The video is called "is it ok to cite religion to deny gay rights" and of course it was pretty much 50/50. It got me thinking and so I want to know how you guys feel about how much power religion has to effect people rights, not just for gay marriage rights, but anything like that.

Here's the video for those interested.

I think I would give more or less the same answer as (senator) Obama in this video in that I believe that heterosexuals and homosexuals deserve 100% equal rights and privilages under the law. But it is down to the individual denominations whether they choose to recognise it within their religion (and hopefully they would recognise it).

And I would expand that ideology out to a wide range of issues, with some exceptions.

What do you think?

Separation of church and government anyone?

As NJ5 said. Seperation of church and government! It's of the utmost importance!

As though it needs to be repeated...separation of church and state.


Why can't we just take a libertarian view which doesn't hold people to gender or sexual labels? We're all just people.

^Exactly, I support separation of church and state too.

I'm curious though to what people think, it has been used before in politics. But some people hold a different view, many countries around the world have an entirely religious government.

In many of these countries at least half of the population would be much better off with a non-religious government (women of course).

seperation of church and state is the only way to go in my opinion.

Jesus was for separation of church and state.

But if we don't do what God wants, He'll go to some other country.

It's hard to state separation of church and state, when you have neo-cons like McCain stating that the US is a christian nation, and basing much of their political views on the beliefs of the religious right.

I hate religion in general, and believe the government should be run with no religious influence at all.

George Carlin once said "those two institutions fuck us enough on their own, can you imagine what they would do together?"