I'm taking a class at the Harvard Divinity School called "Faith, Politics, and Society." Today there was a lot of discussion about developing a personal political stance based on religion. But I am worried not so much about how to arrive at a religious personal political philosophy but rather about how our government should and does treat the religious bases for our political beliefs. If I have gone through the process of weighing my religious beliefs against other factors, have considered to what extent it would be a good idea to impose or encourage or ignore my views as regards the rest of society, and then I show up in the public square and promote my view, am I going to be ignored or scorned because my political views have a religious component?

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court used the “rational basis” test to find a state constitutional right to same-sex marriage last year, and in the process explicitly found that any moral or religious argument against same-sex marriage is irrational. Not unacceptable, not unfair, but irrational. This means that if I and the majority of my fellow Bay Staters believe that there is something morally wrong with same-sex marriage, and elect state legislators who believe the same thing and who enact a law to that effect, the state cannot justify the law because it is derived from an irrational motivation. Of course this has implications for other laws. If morality and religion are indeed no longer justifications for laws and judicial decisions, what is to become of our law, and therefore our society?

To me, and to millions of other Americans, abortion and same-sex marriage and other issues are very religious. Discussions around these issues need to have religious elements. If, having developed a personal political philosophy based on our religion, we are not allowed to bring that philosophy to the table precisely because it is religiously based, our society will be shortchanged.

Some of the comments I've read by Senator Kerry give me pause for the same reasons. For example, he said, "I don't like abortion. I believe life does begin at conception." But, "I can't take my Catholic belief, my article of faith, and legislate it on a Protestant or a Jew or an atheist" because "we have separation of church and state in the United States of America." As a law student who has studied religion law, I can tell Senator Kerry that he is dead wrong when he asserts that “we have separation of church and state in the United States of America.” That is a popular myth that arose from a personal letter written by Thomas Jefferson, who was not too much of a fan of religion in general. What we have in the United States is a First Amendment, which guarantees that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” True, we can’t establish Catholic doctrine as the only acceptable doctrine in the United States. But if you can’t act upon your own religious beliefs—even in a political setting—because others believe differently, then we don’t have Free Exercise in the United States, as guaranteed in our constitution. And that, to me, is very wrong.