It is self-preservation that motivates religious conservatives to try to protect their children from practices that generally will bring death, disease, and emotional trauma into their lives and family. The evangelical Christian faith is peaceable, benign and non-violent. I believe you know it too, logically. But your position is certainly the more popular one these days, and people have no reason to swim upstream against the tide unless they have strong convictions that would cause them to do so. One would hope that truth would be sufficient motivation, but apparently it isn't.
People are free to jump off of any cliff they want to in our society.
Some of us just don't want to go with them and somehow they are upset about that. Rethink As I said to another poster, I have no problem with religious people stating their views forcefully. My problem comes when these views are uttered by a presidential candidate. As far as I'm concerned, I have no problem with Baptists who say that Jews will not get to heaven. I have defended the Baptists who say this.