I find this whole conversation disturbing. We've got at least one person here who wants the only religion in the US to be Christianity, which presumably would mean throwing everyone else out (and I'm sure they'd say good riddance along with it). We've got, yes, the usual hatred of homosexuals. And, above all, this belief that Christianity is the one and only way to believe and live because presumably all other beliefs are false and all behaviours not sanctioned in the Bible are sinful.

I learned a bit about Hinduism when I worked in a multicultural school years ago. We studied the different religions of the students and visited local temples, mosques, etc. Hinduism is one of the most tolerant religions I've had the pleasure to come across. Hindus don't claim that their religion is the only true one and all others are false. They believe that other religious figures -- Mohammed, Jesus, Buddha, etc -- are all avatars of the transcendent (Brahman). All the Hindus I've known have also been happy, laid-back people with no chips on their shoulders. I think they set a wonderful example.

Intolerance is something I loathe. Credit, at least, to Linear AQ. He's made it clear that despite his personal beliefs, whatever they may be, he supports tolerance in secular law. Unfortunately, this enlightened view means that he's going to continue to get a hammering here from people less disposed to allowing other points of view to exist.

Mind you, I suppose I might be giving the impression that I think "anything goes." It's up to a society to draw up their own rules and you'll find that they all have at least some common values, Christian or not. Murder and stealing, for example, are generally seen as bad things -- and how could they not, as they would be detrimental to the cohesion of any society.

I personally think there is too much sexuality in the media, and things have gone downhill for women post-feminism. It seems you can't be a female pop star, for example, without dressing like a whore and making soft-porn videos, and this is a poor role model for young people. As a teacher, I've also seen the knock-on effects of many broken relationships and marriages. But I'm not sure how far you'd curb these tendencies simply by passing laws or censoring. People's beliefs are central to how they behave. Now you might think that the answer to this is to convert everyone to fundamentalist Christianity, but that's not going to happen, and Russ2's statistics show that this isn't necessarily going to produce any significant change in how people behave. (And by the way, there's plenty of literature out there about what people get up to behind closed doors when they live in strict religious communities.) I'm not sure what the answer is myself, but it does seem that it's complicated. In the meantime, as long as we're free to live how we choose, we can always make good choices for ourselves and our families.