Respect separation of church and state

One of the founding ideas of our country, and one of the reasons that we bailed out of England, is the separation of church and state.

Personally I don't want someone else's church doctrine to influence, mandate or control my life and the choices I make for myself. Nor do I feel in a true democracy that my religious beliefs should affect your choices.

The solution is for the state to not recognize any marriages. Instead, they should only recognize civil unions between any couple of legal age, unbiased by gender, color, sexual preference or age, and allow those adults to share in the same equal benefits under the law.

The individual's church should then determine whether their union is appropriate under their god's dogma and recognize their union as a marriage.

Who is to determine which God has the correct answer? We live in a country where there are many different beliefs. Know God, or no God, Know Jesus or don't know Jesus. Jew, gentile, Catholic, Wiccan, Buddhist, neopagan, atheist or Eastern philosophy, we all at some point have to agree that we all can't possibly agree.

Next time at the voting booth let's vote for equality and protection for all under the law for all of our population, not what small percentage of our society we can rob of their personal freedoms and rights.

Either we are granting more personal freedoms under the law or limiting them. I vote for granting them. Oh, I know the retort, "The doctrine of the church is protecting the morality of our great nation." The church does not protect the morality of its peoples by forcing the nonbelievers to conform to their teachings. That's just immoral.

And by the way, gay marriage doesn't destroy marriage, divorce does! Randy King Oak Park