No Christmas For Leesburg

The whole separating church and state is being taken to an extreme all too often. It's getting to the point where there is no freedom of religion, unless you keep it privately to yourself. This comes to mind because Loudoun County is now dealing with an issue that many counties and towns have dealt with before. The removal of Christmas and Hanukkah symbols from public property because they are religious symbols.

Please go here to learn about the saddness happening in Loudoun County.

To be fair the committee did not claim separation of church and state when they made the decision. And because I don't really understand their reasoning and might not, as of yet, have heard the whole reasoning, I should not claim they are automatically wrong. But nonetheless, I know I will never agree with them and do believe some could have voted for the measure because they want to remove all signs of religion from public. But I digress there and will just state that from what I here I think many county officials and citizens do disagree with them and view the committees decision as wrong so hopefully it can be reversed.

Religion is a belief just as not believing in religion or a higher being is a belief. And it is our right and our freedom to express what we believe in. If those nonbelievers feel left out in December maybe they should come up with their own holiday or their own symbol that they can proudly display next to ours instead of always forcing us to take ours down. I am unsure if anybody has been converted based on seeing a Christmas tree so I am unsure of what they are worried about.

As for separation of church and state, the public should be able to use public grounds to express their beliefs. I do not think banning religious symbols was what the founding fathers had in mind when they decided to include that in our Constitution. I think they were thinking of Europe and how the church's often ran and heavily influenced the government. That is not how the system works in America so why are we taking that simple yet powerful phrase so far. Why are we so busy worrying about separation of church and state that freedom of religion is being ignored?