Religious Freedom & Non-Discrimination: Titanic Clash of World Views

   At this very time 396 years ago, a small band of Pilgrims and Puritans were just about half way into their 66-day trip across the Atlantic Ocean from England in a pretty small vessel known as The Mayflower.  They had left behind family members, possessions, their way of life, their ethnic heritage.  They knew very little about the land they were headed for.  They were getting a late start for such a voyage and knew travel was risky at best.
   Why does someone make that kind of trip, take that kind of risk, make those kinds of sacrifices? Fortunately, we don’t have to guess as to the answer. Historical records tell us clearly that these hardy souls came to what would become America not for a better economy or better jobs but for something much more important than that. They came for religious freedom -- for the right to live according to the dictates of their Christian faith and to rear their families within those beliefs.
   One hundred fifty years later, the Founding Fathers fought a war to retain our independence and then struggled with establishing a government that would respect our unalienable, God-given rights.  They called religious freedom the “first freedom” not because it became part of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights to our US Constitution but because it is absolutely foundational and without it no liberty is secure.
   The wording the Founders ultimatel ...