Discrimination

Think about it from another perspective. If your public school or courthouse put up a sign that said "nobody may worship any god but the Muslim one", wouldn't you take offense to that? Even if they didn't have a way to check which god you were worshipping, or even if you could "fake" worshipping that other god, wouldn't you think that was the first step to legitimizing one religion over all others?Wouldn't you, in fact, consider that an unconstitutional endorsement of one religion over all others, and possibly the first step to a union of government and one religion for the purpose of cracking down on all others? A state, I might add, which has been the normal state of affairs in world history until very, very recently, and still persists in many areas of the world?The Ten Commandments, which form no part of the basis of our government, say "I am the LORD thy God; thou shalt have no other gods before me." Or did you forget about that commandment? It's the first one, after all.

It doesn't make us safer, though. Just like pulling over black people in expensive cars doesn't actually catch more drug dealers.What you don't seem to understand is that more scrutiny here means less scrutiny there. The day that we stop searching old grandmas in the airports is when old grandmas start carrying the bombs.I would have thought that was obvious. Like you, I don't give a damn about people's feelings when safety is on the line. But you'd have to be an idiot to come to the conclusion that racial or religious profiling makes us safer, when it's obvious to the most causal observer that it has the exact opposite effect - it opens obvious security holes that can be taken advantage of.

Perhaps you misunderstood. They're the ones that put it up. The citizens are the government, or hadn't you noticed? At any rate, the government is already involved, because they're the one that put it up. And you don't see this as the start of that? How long do you think it is before "thou shalt have no other gods before me" becomes the police rounding up people who worship other gods? If history teaches us anything, it's that it's a seamless transition from one to the other. How can they be unconcerned with it? They put it up! But we're not talking about "the people." If people want to put the Ten Commandments or a 40-ft golden Buddha on their lawns, no problem. We're talking about the government putting these things up, and I don't see how you fail to construe that as the government endorsing a religion.

Here's how it should work - they shouldn't be allowed to. It's clearly unconstitutional. Except for the fact that the Bill of Rights applies at all levels of government. It's still unconstitutional. I can imagine that you might think it shouldn't be, but you'll have to amend the constitution for that. Those statements are equivalent, or rather, the second is directly implied by the first. Public support of one religion over another is an establishment of religion.

The fourteenth amendment means that the provisions and immunities of the Bill of Rights apply at all levels of government. Equivocation on the word "public". I have no concern over what private citizens decide to do, or what they decide to support, even en masse.But we're talking about what the government is doing. Governments cannot take religious positions, the First Amendment is very clear on that. I have a right not to have my tax dollars and my government property, for instance, used to erect the Ten Commandments. Or a large Buddha. Or a mosque.The government can't come out on the side of a religion. It's just that simple. The alternative leads to the kinds of wars that devastated Europe for centuries.

False by inspection. Though a federal law prohibiting gay marriage currently exists, 11 states found it necessary to write similar statutes into their constitutions.Clearly, you can ban something that is already banned.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 01-05-2005 11:52 AM

Didn't you get the memo? Now that the Israeli security forces scrutinize Palestininan men so closely, it's the women that carry the suicide bombs now. Which is exactly what profiling does. It's not like you can profile in a vacumn, or in secret. Profiling makes it completely public who you're looking for, and worse - who you're not looking for.I mean, yeah. Do you really find it so surprising that you can cherry-pick a big list of terror attacks when you restrict your search to the ones committed by Arab men? And then what? Pack him off to Gitmo for changing his name?