It's unfortunate that too many people in America are confused about the place of religion in a democracy. The tradition of this country, and one of the basics of its foundation, is religious freedom. What that means precisely is that each individual is free to practice his or her own religion without government interference--provided the government recognizes that what is practiced is indeed an acceptable religion. For example, a religion that practices homicide is not an acceptable religion in America.
What religious freedom does NOT mean is that any religious group is free to impose its values on other people. That is antithetic to the idea of religious freedom in this country and such a view is totally un-American. It's a true misery that some religious groups in the United States think it's appropriate for them to impose their religious values on the public at large, on people who are not of their religion. Some Catholic bishops, for example, need to be reminded that the United States is not the Holy Roman Empire. Their ecclesiastical religious beliefs must remain separate from American politics. It's one thing for clergy to impose values on their own flock -- it's something quite different for clergy to impose values on people outside their flock. We don't do that in this country. That's not what America is about.
The fundamental problem is that we have a variety of religions in this country and legislating into law the values of one religion can easily produce government interference in the practice of other religions. That's the reason for the separation of Church and State in a democracy. The idea is to keep any accepted religion free from interference by other religions that might dominate government.
Throughout human history, religion has constantly tried to push into politics -- push in and assume control. It succeeds too often and the consequence is usually human misery on a grand scale. The other night we had some men wearing white collars on television talking about Proposition 8 in California and telling us gay marriage should be banned by law. Why? Because it's un-Christian, against the Bible, and it will lead to the destruction of marriage. That's a true unfunny joke. For the first 500 years of Christianity, the Church Fathers were against marriage because they believed marriage promoted sexual lust. No priest or church was allowed to be involved in sanctifying a marriage -- which is one reason marriage banns came into existence: people wanted to announce to the community that they had married themselves. That was the way people did it: they declared themselves married and announced it and from then on they were married.
So much for the infallibility of ecclesiastics: if their old dogma about marriage was wrong 1500 years ago, their new dogma about marriage may very well be wrong today.
Which raises the issue of dogma. In general, dogma is absolute truth proclaimed by authority. It's one of the tragedies of modern Western religions that the evil of dogma is rarely understood. Absolute truth proclaimed by authority is antithetical to any democratic society, especially to American democratic society. We're a pragmatic country, a people whose ideas are derived from many origins, religions, and cultures. We are not a theocracy and we are not a people who like ideology of any kind. In this country, we look at problems, try solutions, and then stick to what works. Any authority, religious or otherwise, proclaiming absolute truth to us is antithetical to what America is all about.
So is religion compatible with democracy? Yes, if you practice your religion or beliefs as you see fit without imposition on the lives of other people. Anything else is un-American, and that's what it needs to be called. Imposition of particular religious values by law or judicial declaration is un-American.