In Con-law we observe the ideas of yesterday that have been made into basic law as they either fade away, are modified to meet new conditions, or are rejected as benighted superstitions or values of a previous age. Not all of them suffer change and ignominy easily.
The religious wars of Europe and England which produced the Massachusetts Bay Colony which developed, along with the other British colonies into the United States, after a revolution, were a product of the Protestant Reformation to whom Martin Luther was given the credit, followed by John Calvin of Geneva.
Slavery and Jim Crow in this country follow, and we still deal with the effects of the failure to respect all people as equals morally and legally.
Attempts by gays to be treated as morally and legally equal are widely seen as violating cultural norms, especially on the subject of gay marriage. See Lawrence v. Texas (2003).
When Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, suffered a series of strokes that have left him incapacitated and in grave condition, the Rev. Pat Robertson of 700 Club fame, a leader of the right wing of the GOP, and a big supporter of Pres. George W. Bush, now says that God is punishing Sharon for giving up Israeli occupied land to Palestinians. No matter that Sharon as an Israeli general led the invasion of Lebanon to stop the rocket attacks and raids from over the border, or that he was widely blamed for the infamous murders in the Shatila refugee camps that killed many Palestinians. That was okay with God, I guess, but withdraw from the Palestinian occupied Gaza strip and the wrath of Robertson's God is sure to follow.
Robertson represents a way of thinking about God that goes back a long way, to long before this country was established. When A does something that B doesn't like, and later A suffers some misfortune, B, a magical-thinker, can then say, "God is punishing A for his sins." B has aligned himself in his own mind with God, and vice versa, so that what B wants must be what God wants.
This is what caused Nazi Germany to imprint on its soldiers' belt buckles, "Gott Mit Uns," God is with us.
Abraham Lincoln, in his Second Inaugural Address (reprinted below), portions of which are carved in stone in the Memorial in Washington, observed with some wonder that both sides in the war for and against slavery relied on the same god.
My personal god is way too smart to fall into the trap of letting opposing sides commandeer her. She won't have anything to do with human beings.
CNN.com has an article, below: