Everyone and everything has a sworn enemy and a polar opposite. Light has darkness, the Jedi have the Sith, and politics has religion. By my understanding of the arguing going on in Congress, there are two sides: what seems right and fair and what the extremely religious people think. The most prevalent example is the issue of gay marriage. To the "average " person, this is just another form of discrimination that was displayed toward African Americans and women not fifty years ago. However, to these religious fanatics it is an issue of what God has set out to be right. Religion has its place in this world, but it is not in politics. Since the United States of America had been founded, there was always a recommendation that the church and state should remain separate. Thomas Jefferson stated in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association: "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and state. The term "wall of separation " was also used by Roger Williams, but with a different meaning. Williams' interpretation of the bible is that the people of God, the Jews and the Christians, were separated from the rest of the world by a "wall of separation"." He believed that once they had made a hole in the wall God would destroy it all together and other people would be added to the religion. Each wall was "constructed"" for its own purpose, but Williams' wall went more unnoticed. But I feel that even though Jefferson's wall still stands, that it's not quite as effective as he would have hoped.
When Americans make political decisions it is entirely based on what they grew up with. Those who grew up learning from the bible see it as God's words and get their beliefs from it.
