A musing Beam

First Principles on the Right to Religious Freedom in the U.S. The is the second in my two-part series on recent religious freedom laws.  The first covered the more practical considerations of how to think about the laws.  This entry is about first principles:  What is the history of religious freedom in the U.S., and what are our rights? Overview The 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution makes us consider religion as something special, trying to keep it free from entanglement with the government.  The government can neither help nor hurt religion.  What that means has been debatable, but in general everyone has long agreed that it definitely applies to complete liberty of belief and complete exclusion of a national religion.  Neutral laws that happen to affect religious observation, such as drug laws, have generally been held to be okay, but the laws cannot be aimed specifically at religion, except that Congress and the states can carefully craft exceptions for religious exempt