I recently came across two petitions that I felt were worthy of my signature:

• Freedom First’s Separation of Church and State petition

• DefCon’s Real American Values petition

  Both are in regards to keeping religion out of American politics. There really is nothing more un-American than mixing religion and the state. Faith-based initiatives are a form of oppression against the non-religious. Forcibly taking citizen money and distributing it to religious causes is nothing short of tyranny.

  What most people don’t seem to realize is just how much of a slippery slope this is. How would you feel if you were a Protestant Christian and the government started giving your tax dollars away to only Catholic organizations? How much power do you think the government will hold over religious institutions if it now can threaten them with taking away their funding? Separation of church and state works both ways. As Samuel James Ervin Jr.. once said:

  “Political freedom cannot exist in any land where religion controls the state, and religious freedom cannot exist in any land where the state controls religion.”