[TKDietz]

People's religious beliefs are part of who they are. I don't think it would be possible for people to make laws without considering their religious beliefs. Ideally, people do what they think is right, especially when they are making laws. Naturally their religious beliefs are going to come into the decision making process when they decide what is right. That's the way it should be and
it would be wrong to demand that people not consider these beliefs so fundamental to who they are.

But when we make laws, we make laws for everyone, at least within our respective jurisdictions. Not everyone has the same religious beliefs. That must be taken into consideration when we make laws too. I think that gives us a responsibility to look at more than just our own particular religious beliefs when we make laws. A law should be fair and make sense even if we take our personal religious beliefs out of the equation. It should stand on it's own. And as Americans claiming to value freedom, one of the many things we should consider in law making is whether our laws are consistent with the notion of a free country. I realize that is rather abstract, but I tend to agree with Jefferson when he said, "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others." That's just one quote out of context, and it may not all be just as simple as that, but I think something we should really pay attention to when contemplating banning conduct is whether that conduct does cause some genuine unjustifiable harm to innocent people, or causes some substantial risk of same. If I can't see the conduct in question as being harmful or at least particularly risky to innocent people, it's usually going to be hard to convince me that it's the type of law we should have in a free country.

[bvw]

We so make laws for everyone, and everyone is covered by the same basic religious laws. This condition of law is the understanding during the years this nation was founded and while the Constiitution was framed, and during its ratification.

There is a seperation between church and state however. That seperation was then reflected in the 1st Amendment, State Constitutions and discussions of of law contemporary to the founding of our Constitutional Republic -- it is not G-d and G-d's laws that are seperated and walled out of Federal authority, legislative and judicial informing -- it is the divisions and particulars of sects. It is fully allowed and reccommended by the Founders that what we today call "religion", in that part which contains its most common basics between sects, whether Christian and Jewish at least and inclusive to some extent of others: Native and Muslim, that those basic tenets of "religion" be included in our laws and even are necessary foundations of our laws.

These religiously informed legal concepts encompass laws against murder, against theft and kidnapping, against adultery, against false testimony. hese may today to seem as "secular", they are not. On the positive side, laws which define marriage, which provide for equity in contract, that provide for agency and fiduciary duty -- also religiously informed.