you mean the super-militant crowd who goes around suing city

you mean the super-militant crowd who goes around suing city ds708 halls around Christmas time about manger scenes in the lawn), make me angry as well. I am seriously all about the separation of church and state, but they need to take it down a peg--there's no need for that type of animus. Christmas is as much a cultural holiday for America as it is a religious one for Christians.I hold politicians, unfair though it may be, to an extra stringent standard, because they're in the public sphere and they shape public policy. What they believe, internally, personally, they are entitled to--just like everybody else. They are entitled to hold their religious beliefs free from scorn, derision, or any other type of discrimination. However, that's where the buck stops. It is inappropriate for them to *act* in the public sphere, or shape public policy, based *solely* on their religious beliefs. (Obviously, I'm not referring to when those beliefs overlap with the general good i.e. Thou Shalt Not Kill). That's why anyone is entitled to be a young Earth-er, but they are not entitled to have that taught in schools as science.While it would be grossly incorrect to categorize myself as an atheist, I would be lying if I said I held a strong faith. However, I have respect for everyone who does--irrespective of the particular religious flavor of that faith. Just don't legislate that faith, (cough, cough, gay marriage opposition), or let that faith trump evidence based scientific progress (creationism, young Earth-ism, etc.) Harken back to Galileo discovering the Earth was not the center of the solar system, much less the center of everything. Imagine if the church had gotten their way for the long haul and suppressed that knowledge as heretical. It's a sin renault can clip to desecrate a body--we'd have no modern medicine without the knowledge gained from cadaver work. No reason to understand the weather systems of the planet, since God makes it all happen anyway. Meteorology is heretical. Yes, I'm being hyperbolic. ;)