Indiana's New Law

C1: The constitution must always change. It is a living document and a fluid outline of the government because the government is something that is built to improve, grow, and change. And frequent changes of regime were definitely intended. "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Thomas Jefferson(1). It is obvious that occasional rebellion was expected and intended by the founding fathers. They supported complete regime changes. C2: Pro misunderstands my point as well as that of the local, "liberal" judge. This is not to declare that atheism is a religion, but to say that those without religion should be protected in their lack of religion under the first amendment. There is a very real difference between the two statements. I also feel that I should explain what a secular view and atheism are. Atheism is a lack of belief in any deity(2). Something that is secular is just something that is connected to no religion(3). These laws force a person to be religious, which goes against an individual's right to not be religious. There are also polytheistic religions. Couldn't this be viewed as discriminatory against those whose religions don't include a supreme being? Jains often don't believe in any supreme being and their religion doesn't demand that they do(4). Are you now defending the oppression of religions that aren't similar to your own? C3: The NAACP, in fact, was upset about the passing of the law. The NAACP president has spoken out against it publicly(5). Supporters of gay rights have been speaking out against it the loudest because they believe that they have been targeted specifically. It is believed by many that the law was tailored to target them. With the new updates to the law, one could argue that the law can do very little. C4: You definitely can deny a person life if you are running a private hospital. A hospital ran by the state wouldn't be allowed to turn anybody away because of this, but private hospitals have to push people away or not provide them specific treatments for economic reasons all the time. Not all hospitals are obligated to help all patients(6). C5: To tackle Pro's bakery scenario, I would say that the baker should serve the man if the argument was not bad enough for the police to need to remove him. I actually work in the food service industry and the customer always being right is not a stereotype or a joke. It is the key to being respected in the industry. C6: It is not becoming more difficult to express your beliefs in public square as long as you do so in a nonviolent or threatening way. It is not harder to discuss religion in schools at all. I am a senior in high school and I hear people talking about Christianity in a good way all the time. Some schools even have religious clubs, which I support fully. The idea that Christianity has less representation is just a sign that there are more non-Christians now than there have been in the past. Those people still deserve equal representation, so Christianity should have less representation than it did before. Being secular doesn't stop a religion from expressing itself in any way. It stops religions from oppressing one another and keeps the representation fair. When you speak out against a secular society, are you saying we should have a theocracy? A secular democracy is about equality of religions, not of putting any below or above others(7). It isn't atheism, and it is good for everybody. Please, vote for Con! 1: www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasjeff109180.html 2: http://atheists.org...? 3: http://dictionary.reference.com... 4: http://www.jainpedia.org... 5: http://www.naacp.org... 6: http://law.freeadvice.com... 7: http://www.secularism.org.uk...