But then you get into the dark and murky anthropological waters of the separation between religion and society.

For example, the law currently disallows polygamy - but if you look at all the cultures around the world you will find that monogamy is somewhat of a Judeo-Christian idea to begin with - at the very least there are many societies where it is perfectly acceptable.

So now the question must be asked: is our desire to have a monogamous society coming from our Christian roots, or is it something that transcends religion and becomes a shared ideology?

There are a great many issues where it's not easy to say "this comes from religion" vs. "this comes from our social order".

> There are a great many issues where it's not easy to say "this comes from religion" vs. "this comes from our social order".

The world is certainly a complex place.

State-sponsored teaching that evolution is bunk, and that the koran/bible/FSM is literal truth, though, is probably crossing the boundary, and that's what we were discussing, not monogamy.

> State-sponsored teaching that evolution is bunk, and that the koran/bible/FSM is literal truth, though, is probably crossing the boundary, and that's what we were discussing, not monogamy.

The problem though is that, from the government side anyways, the two arguments are not separable. As soon as you propose to limit/expand the freedoms of one special interest group, all of them swarm out of the woodwork.

The problem is also that you cannot say "this is crossing the boundary" without first defining what the boundary is. Sure, teaching creationism (for us) is well beyond this ephemeral concept of "the line", but fair governance requires us to actually define where "the line" is.