You are creating a logical error for yourself, the error of the complex question.
They aren’t “special rights granted Christians”. They are civil laws derived from the cultural mores of a basically Protestant society. It was a commonplace of American life from it’s beginning up to the mid 1960s.
The 1960s were a revolutionary decade marking the rise of the counter culture. The counter culture made a sharp break with historic American values. Evidently the counter culture’s values are what you are accustomed to think of as ‘normal’, to the point that you find the older culture preposterous and possessing “special rights”.
That idea is one that has long been promoted by the cultural left in its war against Christian influence in public life. So I have lived through a time when bible verses were read in public elementary schools to a time when even private firms replace ‘Merry Christmas’ with the odious ‘Happy Holidays’.
So we DO have a right to not be offended? As I understand it, speaking to another FReeper here, we have a right to not be offended based upon the validity of our morals and standards.
It’s a hypothesis that I lean toward supporting. Is it what you are trying to say as well?