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Originally Posted by joegrundman
But the right to speak and to persuade and to be persuaded are fundamental in modern liberal democratic society.
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Only as far as the basic meaning of secularism is not violated - and this sets limits to zealot's rights to actively approach members of society at every opportunity. It is one thing to place a poster at a church saying that tomorrow at 8:00 somebody is talking about what he believes. It is something very different if his background organization tries to to change the curriculum of public education and tries to make offices of the state obeying to these rules and impose this stuff onto school-children at public school - this is a frontal attack on secularism. The secular basic order of western nations is mentioned and protected by the constitutions, even in the american one. And freedom of religious practicing does not mean the state has an obligation - or even the right - to serve the interests of a religious club. It means it has to keep away from right this, make sure religious communities do not step over the line and make sure that other people are protected from claims these religious groups may express they have over other people. Nothing else the American constitution is saying. If somebody thinks the constitution makes the United State a christian nation, or the US has been founded on the basis of making it a 'christian nation, he better read itagain, for he understood something terribly wrong. Has has been posted in live quotes several times in this forum.
The same like if you turn up the volume of your radio too much: you cause the noise, you are responsible to switch it off or become so silent again that others must not listen to your radio program. In Germany there is the legal principle of "Zimmerlautstärke", for example. It means a radio may be run only so loud that outside the room/the appartement of where you run it the radio may not be heared by anybody, for your freedom ends were you start to limit the freedom of others (the freedom not wanting to listen to your noise, for example). there is some interpretation room, but when you run your radio so loud that others cannot ignroe it anymore, can't even liosten to the different program of their own radios, then you have stepped over the line
at the latest.