Latest test for church, state

Karl Felsen writes at the Albany Times Union: “Brian Raum’s lawyerly Dec. 16 commentary, ‘Preserving marriage requires restricting it,’ is a good primer on why we find it so difficult as a society to sort out issues such as abortion and gay marriage. We are a nation of laws, and the most basic governmental reform our Founding Fathers created in defining what is unique about America is the separation of church and state. Yet we are also a religious people with many creeds and cultures flowing into our United States. So while Raum speaks of ‘Senate votes,’ ‘federal courts,’ ‘the New York judiciary,’ and other legal oriented phrases, he also slips in, either directly or by quoting judicial decisions, references to ‘culture and creed,’ ‘accepted truth,’ and ‘this belief. . . ‘”