DubaiSis,
First off, thank you for your response. I’m sorry that you’re bowing out of the conversation, and I’m hope that was due to my plethora of questions. I would like to comment, nonetheless. This is long enough as is, so I’m not going to use the quote function and just number these as they were in the original questions.
1.The most recent Gallup poll on abortion is found here:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx). I don’t see an overwhelming majority in any category, but I’ll give you the majority viewpoint. I’m assuming you brought it up because you believe that the majority should prevail. I agree this is often the way our political system is supposed to work, but I would argue we aren’t a society where right is solely decided by majority opinion since, as history shows, the majority isn’t necessarily right and can be horrifically wrong. Consequently, we have fail safes in our system to prevent that from happening and protect the voice of the minority. Even in the instances where the majority typically does decide on law or policy, it only works if they follow through with their civic responsibility, and if they fail to do so, they have little grounds to complain when the opinion of a vocal minority becomes law instead.
I’m gathering this is what you meant when you indicated that you think certain groups “scream louder”. Since you obviously don’t mean they are literally screaming the majority into submission, I can’t guess what this would mean other than they protest, write their legislators, write the media, or put things out in the media, form action committees, give money to those action committees, get out and vote, encourage others who think like them to get out and vote….in other words, they exercise their right to free speech, their right to vote, and their right of association to make their voice heard. Is this what you mean and do you find any of this wrong? Which one of these steps is not available to opposing groups? I suppose you could be referring to a group engaging in harassment since you mentioned it, but this generally results in enough negative publicity to alienate your group and make it less likely their viewpoints will be heard, so I would disagree that this particular method would typically result in the views of a minority prevailing over the views of a majority.
I do agree with you that we are and have always been a pluralistic, secular society. I believe in the separation of church and state since the founder of my denomination was one of the first in the colonies to advocate for it. However, semantically, I disagree with you. I don’t think separation of church and state means freedom from religion or, as some in my circles claim, freedom for religion. I think it means a) the government cannot establish a state religion b) people are free to practice any religion and c) people are free not to practice any religion. Having said that, I’ve haven’t seen any evidence to suggest this means that those who are religious or claim to be religious must leave the views that were formed by those beliefs at the door when they vote or serve in government. No one comes to their beliefs in a vacuum, and it shouldn’t matter how anyone comes to their beliefs as long as everyone has an equal opportunity to express them and advocate for them through appropriate political channels.
We, as a society, impose our views on each other daily in that we have created laws (codified morality) that we agree to abide by regardless of whether we agree with the law. We have methods of changing them, but unless they change, we live by them. If we choose not to use the means available to us to change laws we believe are immoral or enact laws that we believe are moral, we can’t claim what exists was crammed down our throats by a minority since we have, in effect, willingly opened our mouths and swallowed by our own inaction.
I appreciate your clarification on your comment about Christians moving to a Christian country. Besides the obvious problem that none exists, the difference in wording doesn’t change my concern about the phrase. It’s still, in effect, America – Love it or leave it. I have issues with that as I think most people, conservative or liberal, would. While at some point, if we have used every legal means available to us, we will have to live under certain laws or rules we don’t adhere to, every group who mutually holds any view has a right and a responsibility, in my view, to fight (using legal means) for the America they envision. We can certainly choose to leave it at some point, but we shouldn’t be told that if we have a minority viewpoint, we should just shut up and deal or leave – that’s exactly why we have those fail safes Without them we would still have slavery, since at one point the abolitionists held a minority viewpoint. Thank heavens they screamed.
2. No I by no means believe in terrorism under any circumstances, regardless of how moral I may feel a cause to be. I asked the question because it sounded to me like you were suggesting that only those who would typically be described as conservatives or the right were engaging in extremist actions when they felt the issues were vital, and those whom we would typically describe as being on the left did not do such things, but I’ll assume that I missed your point here and leave that alone.
3. Actually I think MysticCat did a better job of expressing what my response to this probably would have been a few posts up, and he’s more succinct (LOL), so I’ll just defer to his post on this one.