More On The Separation Of Church And State.

“...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...”

United States Declaration of Independence,
July 4, 1776.​

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity...”

Constitution of the United States,
September 17, 1787.​

“Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights...”

Declaration of the Rights of Man, 1789
Approved by the National Assembly of France, August 26, 1789.​

As you can see during the Age of Enlightenment, people believed in representative democracies as a form of government agreed. The only purpose of government by then was for public order, safety and welfare. Laws against dancing, drinking, witchcraft and pornography would be considered religious offenses. And people like Washington and Jefferson would be against a law that was in any way a church offense.

Jefferson did support laws against adultery and gay sex. In the Virginia Assembly in 1779 he introduced a bill that made adultery and sodomy punishable by mutilation and castration. Which at the time made him seem too moderate to some people. I think he was just trying to choose a moderate path between the two extremes. He seemed to people at that time to be a Christian. He used to attend services at St. Anne's Episcopal Church at his home in Monticello. If asked what his religious views were, he'd just tell people “I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know” and that, like fellow Deist John Adams, the Ten Commandments and the sermon on the mount contained his religion.

The so-called liberal Warren Court 1953-69 (which like I tell people always had a slim majority of Republicans, like Earl Warren—himself appointed by President Eisenhower) upheld obscenity and pornography statutes with the Memoirs v. Massachusetts of 1965 test (which later became the 1973 Miller test). And they basically upheld the sodomy statutes too, doing nothing to overturn them or address gay rights in any way.

But these were all ecclesiastical crimes, and thus violations of the establishment clause of the First Amendment. I've heard people say that for years. But I didn't realize they weren't exaggerating at all when they said that. Why the Warren Court allowed this, I don't know. They did find a general right to privacy in the Constitution, which they said has existed since ancient times. But they also said that they didn't think laws against dancing or drinking on Sundays violated the Constitution in any way.

 

Sounded great, but the only rights people have / enjoy are those given / granted by whomever is in power at any given time. The rights given in North Korea are quit different than those here in the US. Same with Russia, Iran, ect.