No, that's not what I said. I said that I don't think people who classify themselves as either atheist or transgender should be accorded equal protection under the law the same as gender issues or the freedom of religion under the First Amendment.
I appreciate your friend's service to his country. We need more people like him! But military service does not entitle a person to broader Constitutional protection of his rights.
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As to our Constitutional freedom of religion, let's take a look at the Amendment itself:
"Amendment I. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"
Notice that the Amendment does not prefer any one religion over another, and gives rights to the free exercise of any religion. I don't see where the wording of the First Amendment grants any rights for the absence of religion. And that's what atheism is, the absence of religion--or rather, the belief that there is no God (or gods, etc.). I understand that some federal judge made a ruling in Wisconsin a decade or so ago stating that a prison inmate's atheism was a religion. I think that judge was wrong. That's all I am saying.