What Lauren Learned at AU

Americans United has some of the brightest young people in the country working in it offices. One of them is Lauren Smith who has served as a communications assistant for the past three years. She's heading off to law school now, but as she said her good-bye's she penned a note about what she learned while working for AU. Here's an excerpt:

5) Religious liberty is, at its heart, about equality -– and we’re not there yet.

Roger Williams, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson knew that equality lay at the heart of what they created. It depresses and discourages me to think that so many Americans don’t understand – or don’t accept – this concept.

Governments in the United States don’t have religious opinions because they must treat every citizen equally. Justice Hugo Black wrote in 1963 that “[w]hen the power [and] prestige…of government is placed behind a particular religious belief, the indirect coercive pressure upon religious minorities to conform to the prevailing officially approved religion is plain.”