Personal faith of a politician should not influence their votes or political decisions

Before I do my official rebuttal I would like to clear a few things. First, is this debate only about the U.S? It wasn't clear in the opening speech but I will argue from this frame of mind. Also for definitions, religion is religion. I am not going to define it as that would take thousands of pages to define it well. The voters should decide what they think religion is defined as. My arguments wont rely on a topicality/definition argument but it is more than just an organized faith. I have one main argument for using religion to influence policy and one main rebuttal to the previous arguments. 1. Deductive reasoning There is no such thing in politics as deductive reasoning or objective reasoning. Even if we put all the dollar costs and benefits of one policy into a list and weighed the list to see what was best, we are basing policy off of what item maximizes dollars. We can do the same for equality and freedom. There is no way to maximuze "utility" or do what is best, per se, as this is an abstract term. If we want to maximize dollars then the poor should pay huge taxes as rich people make more off of a dollar than poor people do. If we want to maximize equality, the rich should hold a huge part of the tax burden. If we want to maximize liberty we should shrink government a lot. A policy that is "best" takes these three things into consideration and there inherently is disagreement. Some people prefer liberty, some equality, and some money. There also is fairness and a host of other ways to judge a policy. There is no such thing as deductive reasoning in the social sciences as the "best" is very subjective and is defined differently by others. Why should religion influence policy sometimes? Should is a very subjective word and it looks like we both can agree that should is based on some form of utilitarian measurement. What is best for the country , objectively measured, should happen. The issue here is that one cannot objectively measure many issues (as stated above). If we could objectively measure actions, we all would in agreement about anything that doesn't directly affect ourselves. Policy is based on an collection of everyone's desires. There are so many ways to measure what we "should" do or what is "best" for society. There is no clear cut decision. The founders wisely thought about this and decided on a form of representative government. 2. Factions The problem with representative government is that often single groups emerge w/ common interests. These groups eventually become large enough to exert influence on policy making and the minority group suffers. What the founders did was base a system off of factions. In theory, there would be so many small factions that one alone could not control the rest. This is what our system of voting is based off of. Theoretically, I vote for whomever would provide me with the greatest benefit. If I was a politician and I wanted to maximize votes, I should base my strategy around ways that maximize votes. If I wanted the catholic vote, I might use my religion to influence policy sometimes if this gets me votes. This view is on an individual level. On a global level we want politicians who do us the greatest good. Perhaps politicians using religion to make policy is bad though this practice pays out for them. This would be an example of a market failure and some party should step in and do whats "best" for society. When does this stop? Does it get to a point where, unless one objectively weighs every decision one cannot vote? If we do enforce this infringement on liberty by banning religion as a way to get votes, who enforces this? Wouldn't an objective observer not be so objective. Wouldn't he fall prey to the same vices we do. We end up just using government to infringe on liberty. We just lost a faction and the others can get more influential. I advocate maximum liberty. I want many different factions competing so one does not gain control. A final example of why one could use religion to effectively decide policy is that identifying as a member of a group has the same benefits as identifying as part of a party. Sometimes you need to vote with your party now so they'll vote with you for something big in the future. There is no easy way to define "should". We are presented with voting as a group and coercing any dissenters or we can divvy up into factions and maximize liberty. We can allow other ideas to compete on the marketplace or we can vote as a majority and coerce the minority. Religion is just one faction of many influencing politics but if we got rid of this why not get rid of other subjective criteria. I believe that we can maximizes liberty and hence maximize utility by encouraging a factitious system of government where we vote for whom we think is best for us and not whom objectively is best. Religion plays a key part in that. Therefore sometimes religion should effect policy.