[Antoninus]

The basic premise of personal liberty and personal responsibility combined with minimal government is a fairly popular view anyone who doesn't need the government to force their morals on others.

But you see, that's where libertarians go off the rails. When you get down to the level of local governments passing statutes that the people vote for, you're not so much talking about a big, impersonal governing body as the right of localities to make the rules they live under.

As we have it now, it's the big, impersonal government which comes along--usually in the form of federal judges--and says: no prayer in public schools, boyscouts must admit homosexuals, you must accept homosexual tennants in your properties, all Christian symbols must be removed from public places, you must allow an adult video store to open in your town square, you may not put porn-filters on your public library's computers, you may not outlaw abortion, sodomy is a civil right, etc.

We live in an age where government is enforcing their immorality on an unwilling populace which, in any sane world, is orders of magnitude worse than the government actually trying to enforce moral behavior in accord with Natural Law.

[Filo]

There is no such thing as "Natural Law" and morality/immorality is not something that the government should be involved in at any level.

Law, on the whole, should exist, of course and the Ten Commandments are a damn good place to start. Laws governing anything victimless should not exist.

You can argue until you are blue in the face about what constitutes a victimless situation, but really, anything a consenting adult (or any number of them) engage in without harming or risking direct harm to others shouldn't be in the government's purview under any circumstances.

You wanting to ban or support prayer in public schools (using your example) is you imposing your beliefs on others. You can't ask the government to do that for you - either way! If 99 out of 100 people agree that Prayer should be banned (or allowed) in public schools than one person is being oppressed. Period.

Prayer may bother you. Atheism may bother you. The existence of one or the other is not harming you.

The same holds true of the rest of the examples you raised.

Feel free to protest, pontificate, hold meetings or prayer groups, set up alternate organizations etc. but don't force others to believe like you do.

I realize that this isn’t perfect and that there are grey areas, but the alternative sucks worse.