stargeezer, you are going to get push-back and disagreement when you declare religious ideas on a privately owned website "passionate about Ayn Rand's ideas." It's important to keep in mind the difference between a "public place" and being "in public" — they are not the same. On this forum, we are "in public", in a sense, but you don't have any rights to free speech here...and neither do I. On this privately owned site, their Rule is: "Be civil." So, within the bounds of civility, your religious views will often be subject to criticism on this site.

IF the owners of the site told you that your religious ideas were fallacious and prohibited you from writing about them, would they be violating your first amendment rights? No. They could change their rules every day, if they wanted. Your option? Log off. The same is true for any member.

The idea of “protected groups,” which are historically maintained by a mass disrespect of individual rights, are real, in many minds. So are many other ideals that are wrong.

Controlling who a business can and can't hire based on the whims of the majority is the definition of socializing the means of production.

I hate that statement. Did you know sometimes redistributing wealth is needed to protect people? Did you know murder is sometimes needed to protect people. Sometimes you have to take away people's rights to protect people.

Actually the protected class is 'religion' . Yeah, it's real.

I'm going to start with the complete exert from Wikipedia dealing with a protected group or class. I think it's informative that in their example they speificly included one that involved discrimination about religion. That one deals with antisemitism but the same can apply to Christians if the discrimination is based on or the result of the persons religion.

Protected group
A protected group is a group of people qualified for special protection by a law, policy, or similar authority. In the United States, the term is frequently used in connection with employees and employment.

U.S. federal law protects employees from discrimination or harassment based on sex, race, age, disability, color, creed, national origin or religion. Many state laws also give certain protected groups special protection against harassment and discrimination, as do many employer policies. Although it is not required by federal law, employer policies may also protect employees from harassment or discrimination based on marital status or sexual orientation.[1]

Where discrimination on the basis of protected group status is concerned, a single act of discrimination may be based on membership in more than one protected group. For example, discrimination based on anti-Semitism may relate to religion, national origin, or both; discrimination against a pregnant woman might be based on sex, marital status, or both.

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Next let's look at the federal EEOC handbook excerpt that. Covers discrimination. Note that while the phrase religion is used, no specific sect is identified. We can assume by this that there is no difference between christian, Jews, siek or any other faith.

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Religious Discrimination
Religious discrimination involves treating a person (an applicant or employee) unfavorably because of his or her religious beliefs. The law protects not only people who belong to traditional, organized religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism, but also others who have sincerely held religious, ethical or moral beliefs.

Religious discrimination can also involve treating someone differently because that person is married to (or associated with) an individual of a particular religion or because of his or her connection with a religious organization or group.

Religious Discrimination & Work Situations
The law forbids discrimination when it comes to any aspect of employment, including hiring, firing, pay, job assignments, promotions, layoff, training, fringe benefits, and any other term or condition of employment.

Religious Discrimination & Harassment
It is illegal to harass a person because of his or her religion.

Harassment can include, for example, offensive remarks about a person’s religious beliefs or practices. Although the law doesn’t prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that aren’t very serious, harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision (such as the victim being fired or demoted).

The harasser can be the victim's supervisor, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or someone who is not an employee of the employer, such as a client or customer.

Religious Discrimination and Segregation
Title VII also prohibits workplace or job segregation based on religion (including religious garb and grooming practices), such as assigning an employee to a non-customer contact position because of actual or feared customer preference.

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The EEOC guide also lists protected classes by category. Religious people who are discriminated against are defined by the following.

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Religion The term "religion" includes "all aspects of religious observance and practice, as well as belief." 42 U.S.C. � 2000e-(j). The EEOC Guidelines state that protected religious practices "include moral or ethical beliefs as to what is right and wrong which are sincerely held with the strength of traditional religious views." 29 C.F.R. � 1605.1.
Sincerity of religious belief is an issue for the trier of fact. E.E.O.C. v. Ilona of Hungary, Inc., 97 F.3d 204 (7th Cir. 1997). The statute imposes a duty to "reasonably accommodate to an employee's or prospective employee's religious observance or practice" unless doing so would impose an "undue hardship on the conduct of the employer's business." 42 U.S.C. � 2000e-(j).

Title VII exempts from coverage a "religious corporation, association, educational institution, or society with respect to the employment of individuals of a particular religion to perform work connected with the carrying on by such corporation, association, educational institution, or society of its activities." 42 U.S.C. � 2000e-1(a). Religious discrimination is also not unlawful under Title VII where religion is a BFOQ for the job in question. 42 U.S.C. � 2000e-2(e)(1).  

First paragraph clearly states that your religion or lack thereof is none of the government's business.

The right of free speech and against a state religion hardly means that a particular religious group or all such groups combined are a special protected class of people.

There are no "protected groups". That would utterly contrary to what this country was created upon. Everyone has equal inalienable rights. Period.

Your response is a typical Ad hominem type defense. Making something legal does not automatically make it right. I would still say that no one is sub-human, even if some national court of law placed some laws on some books that proclaimed some groups of them were.

And as much as you hate them they are upheld in court. Proclaiming that a hours does not have four legs does not cut off one.

Congress shall.make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging freedom speech, or of the press, or of the people to freely assemble, and for the people to petition the government for a redress of their grievances.

I thought that a brief review of the pertinent aamdndmen might be helpful, because I don't see anyplace where the first part of this amendment or the second part, or even the third clause have "slid into the could of antiquity" or some other such nonsense.

The government is expressly forbidden to pass ANY law that limits, forbids, or causes my free religious speech however it's uttered, publicized, distributed, or otherwise desiminated.

If a gay couple can sue a baker over a cake, I'd suggest not telling me that I have no right to proclaim my faith, just as you have the same right to proclaim your non-faith.

Likewise there is no limit found there on the religious person that keeps them from using whatever public media that is available to them. For instance a website. Or a website that is owned by another person who does not object to it's use.or a site to which a member may discuss their faith in a open forum - like the gulch.

It should be noted that I have never used my membership in the gulch like that and have asked the moderators I there was any limitation on religious speech. The reply has always been no. After all, we are supposed to all be seeking the same thing, if I include religion in my life, and you choose not too, big deal - unless you take exception to my faith.

Allow me to once more ask the owners if there is any reason a peaceable member here cannot be a Christian?

I read references to Christians having "damaged" the constitution by their use of it's protections from people who would stiffle their speech as undesirable or harmful speech. Perhaps these would feel the same about the Declaration of Independence where Jefferson most firmly found that the least infringement of religious freedom was enough of a transgression to DEMAND the seperation of America from the religious control of England's crown.

I'd love to jump into the other documents our founding fathers wrote, but my phone is a miserable device for reaserch. When I return home, allow me to update these. And please forgive any typos - the phone is also to blame.

If you don't think that government getting involved in any way with how a citizen operates his business or how he chooses to trade with others including employees that are trading labor for money and benefits is socialist - how else would you describe it? The CRA eliminates free and voluntary trade in favor of some government goal.

Govt controlling who employers choose not to hire and impeding free association. It has spawned regulatory burden and quotas. And takes away the individual's right to freely associate. It sure ain 't capitalism

The mere concept of a 'protected class' is abhorrent to the meritocracy the founders intended for this country and that most Objectivist would prefer. But in the history of the country starting with Lincoln and blacks, many such as women, communists, veterans, the disabled, American indians, refugees from various American involved wars, those with unpopular religious beliefs and organized religions in general, any that by numbers are counted as a minority, labor and professional unions, businesses and financial institutions, and more recently LGBT have all sought and been granted, many multiple times and in steps, either through legislation or by the courts, 'protected class' status.

None of those grants have helped the country nor solved the immediate problems they were allegedly going to solve when granted. Not only did such grants not solve the immediate problem, but in fact in many cases, worsened the situation and in all cases generated worse problems for the country and those of the following generations of 'protected class' . Nor are any of those grants Constitutional under plain reading or original intent. There are no words nor articles in the original Constitution that permit the government such authority or mandate. In fact, just the opposite was the intent - to prevent or limit the government's ability to form such special citizens or control and direct their social interactions.

As a result of the reduction of the influence of the Christian community in the policies of the country, both real and perceived, and out of envy, many in the Christian community believe that they too should be granted such a status. It's not realistic for them to seek such recognition through legislation (though they've tried) or the courts (though again they've tried). So many have switched to re-interpretation of the Constitution in general and the 1st Amendment in particular in an attempt to gain what the Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights specifically to prevent - government-religion partnerships and preferences.

An additional problem, and again one that the founders were aware of, was that there are only two major religions on earth that have as a major component of their beliefs and instructions from their originators, proselytizing and even forced conversion of others into their religion - Christians and Muslims. As a result they both see other religions and non-believers as threats against their beliefs and desires of controlling the society and cultures around themselves. Through the 1st Amendment, the founders intended that not only did the government not prohibit or get involved in the freedom of the citizen to believe and practice his choice of religion as he saw fit, but also to protect the freedom of the citizen from religion.

The intent of the founders and their wisdom is plain, but has been deeply damaged through the designations and pronouncements of 'special citizens' and 'protected classes'. I fear that any gain the Christian religion could receive by attaining such recognition or new understanding of the 1st Amendment would only further damage the already weakened Constitution and further the goals of the progressives and statists.

well by that logic women should be a protected class under "citizens"

geez, I hope you are ok star. let us know

I'm on my way to the hospital for a couple days but I'll try to contribute as much as possible.

First, since this was started as a response to what I said in another thread, allow me to correct my stated position. There IS a stated and special rights given to religious speech. The bill of right opens by giving religious speech a guarantee of freedom from governmental control and freedom in public. The free speech the founders sought was freedom of religious expression, not freedom FROM religious expression.

Now I must get back on the road. I'll check back tonight.

Well said!

Bill of Rights does not grant groups protected status. The exception being, as Hiraghm pointed out in another thread, Citizens.

Protected group is an anti-constitutional construct from the civil rights movement.

Used because it is not as inflammatory as the truth would be. The truth being government enforced discrimination.

As anectdotal proof that Christians are not a protected group simply observe how gleefully the media denigrates them. Along with smokers, fat people, and any other group they don't like this week.

Posters here do the same thing, on both sides.

Internet anonymity grants backbones and attitudes many posters would never have face to face. Life in the online world. /shrug