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The constitutional promise not to designate a particular Church Of The United States has spread far beyond its initially designed boundaries.

I agree with that statement. I long for the days when people looked forward to seeing the Christmas tree go up in the town center and singing carols (brace yourself) in public schools. And I'm Jewish, for heaven's sake...

The fact that the Ten Commandments are posted on the walls of courthouse that routinely ignore them is not just an affront to God, but to civilized society.

We were a far better country when people prayed more and complained less, and looked to their neighbors not as strangers but as friends.

At the same time when government power was held as explicitly limited with regard to economic activity, it was also constrained from entering into areas of voluntary personal behavior where force or fraud were absent.

To be fair though, public morality and civil behavior were far more common in our early years precisely because we were largely a moral people informed by God's word. There's no denying it, and increasingly, I have little patience for people (often, hard-core libertarians) who insist that morality can be defined solely by reference to what is humanly possible, as long as it is voluntarily enacted and endured.

That is why homosexuality is such a difficult subject, and I will not pretend to have all the right answers or views about it. I know a lot of gay people - having worked in the entertainment industry and also being a somewhat creative person who has a disposition to instinctively like others rather than distrust them. Perhaps that's a character flaw, but I've never quite seen it that way.

The "gay" people I know fall into two very distinct categories; for the purpose of shorthand I'll refer to them as "the shy and the obnoxious". The "shy" ones tend to be quiet, unassuming, apolitical and in their relationships, highly monogamous. They are a minority among a minority. But they exist, and they are some of the kindest, sweetest people I have ever known. You might not be surprised to know that they also tend to believe in God.

The other class contains the ones who are flamboyant, angry, decadent, self-destructive and vindictive beyond imagination. They are the ones who get all the attention and who today, control much of our public culture (and of course have significant influence in today's Democrat Party).

I am not blind to the evil that informs the dominant gay culture in places like San Francisco. I've written about it and even discussed it with gay people and I know that some of them, at least are repulsed by the sort of behavior that they themselves refuse to participate in (without getting too graphic about it).

This much I know: it is a complex issue, not pure black and pure white. The Scriptures do in fact frown upon homosexual behavior, as does the Talmud. But such behavior has existed since before Antiquity, and yet has been tacitly accepted in many civilized nations as long as it remained private and discrete and did not prey upon the young and vulnerable. Ancient Greece imploded as a civilization in part because such behavioral constraints were broadly ignored, but then, they were a pagan culture and so many of today's "obnoxious" gays are just that: pagans.

You strike me as a very intelligent person, and that's why I am writing at length. I am conflicted as a human being who on one hand believes so strongly in God and His commandments, but one who also sees that not all homosexuals are worthy of generic condemnation in light of the rot at the center of our culture, a rot that goes far deeper than issues of human sexuality but instead to the matter of who we ultimately serve as human beings and how our behavior toward our fellow human beings can both define and redeem our eternal souls.