This is actually the most interesting thing I have read all day.
I think it is especially difficult dealing with Christians because they seem to have this woe as me mentality like they are constantly under attack by others even when they are the main perpetrators of bias, intolerance or even violence against another religious group.
The Air Force Academy in Denver, Colorado, the same one that a few years ago that had dozens of female cadets complaining that their complaints of sexual assaults were being ignored is now under fire for turning a blind eye to religious harassment of some of the non-Christian cadets by other Christian cadets.
School officials have claimed to have received 55 complaints over the past few months from cadets for everything from being called “filthy Jews” and blaming them for “killing Christ”, to “proselytizing in inappropriate places”.
"There have been cases of maliciousness, mean-spiritedness and attacking or baiting someone over religion." said academy spokesman Johnny Whitaker.
Well 90% of the 4,300 cadets at the academy identify themselves as Christians, even the school leader Commandant Brig. Gen. Johnny Weida, describes himself as a born again Jesus freak.
Yet when it has been announced that all 9,000 at the academy are going to be required to take some religious tolerance courses to try to help stop this growing problem of religious intolerance the Christians predictably saw this as somehow an attack against them.
"If 90 percent of cadets identify themselves as Christian, it is common sense that Christianity will be on evidence on the campus," said Tom Minnery, vice president of public policy at Focus on the Family, who maintains that it is actually the Christians who are facing discrimination. "Christianity is deeply felt and very important to people ... and to suggest that it should be bottled up is nonsense. I think a witch hunt is under way to root out Christian beliefs. To root out what is pervasive in 90 percent of the group is ridiculous.”
See what I mean?
So even though Christians are 90% of the academy and not so coincidently the ones that are making life hell for anyone that isn’t Christian, somehow the Christians are the ones being targeted for discrimination.
This is classic.
"It's Jim Crow, it's lipstick on a pig, it's eye candy," said Mikey Weinstein, an academy graduate and lawyer in Albuquerque, N.M., he is the father of the kid who had been called a "filthy Jew. "I love the academy, but they are lying when they say this isn't a systemic problem."
And still Jesus freaks have absolutely no clue why our founding fathers wanted a complete separation from Church and State.
It was for reasons just like this.
If you are an American you can be of any faith. Faith is not what binds us, what binds us is our national identity and that identity that is bounded to the idea in the inalienable rights guaranteed to every American by our Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution.
An American should be able to defend this country against foreign as well as domestic threats without feeling like he or she has to pass some intolerant Christian’s litmus test.
In my opinion, what makes this country great is the idea that race, creed, color, sex, religious and sexual orientation enjoys no preference and is truly of no consequence.
The only thing that an American should be concerned with is keeping alive the tie that binds us. And if you think about it, what is a patriot if he is not someone who defends the tie that binds?
I don’t pity any nation that is seduced into believing that they are no more or less than its geographical boundaries. Because a nation that follows such thought is based on nothing and its fate to fade into irrelevance and then into nothingness is just.
For without the a single soldier from an invading army embedding a single footprint on its shore or a foreign diplomat from a competing interest uttering single threatening word, a nation that has forgotten the tie that binds them will be brought to its knees as certainly and as day will fade into night.
But the nation that defends the principle that it is built upon is unconquerable, and has no choice but manifest its destiny to be great.
I can think of no better way to end this article than with quotes from some our founding fathers who were very clear about their intentions regarding separation of government and religion.
These next few quotes will be to the theocon, what holy water is to a vampire.

Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one-half the world fools and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.
-- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-82

[N]o man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
-- Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779)

Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.
-- Thomas Jefferson, to the Virginia Baptists (1808).

"The founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents who had thus far been elected [Washington; Adams; Jefferson; Madison; Monroe; Adams; Jackson] not a one had professed a belief in Christianity....
-- The Reverend Doctor Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister in Albany, New York, in a sermon preached in October, 1831

Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by a difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.
-- George Washington, letter to Edward Newenham, October 20, 1792

"But the most dangerous Hypocrite in a Common-Wealth, is one who leaves the Gospel for the sake of the Law: A Man compounded of Law and Gospel, is able to cheat a whole Country with his Religion, and then destroy them under Colour of Law: And here the Clergy are in great Danger of being deceiv'd, and the People of being deceiv'd by the Clergy, until the Monster arrives to such Power and Wealth, that he is out of the reach of both, and can oppress the People without their own blind Assistance."
-- Benjamin Franklin, comparing the politicized clergyman with the regular clergyman, a thing which a few have ventured to do in recent times (Ahem!), quoted in The New England Currant (July 23, 1722)

If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish Church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. These found it wrong in the bishops, but fell into the same practice themselves both here and in New England.
-- Benjamin Franklin, An Essay on Toleration