Friends, as most of you know, I get to spend an hour each week with a group of young people going through addiction recovery.  Yes.  Young people.  I’m talking teenagers who are locked away for at least six months as they learn to overcome their addictions.  I’m always humbled and honored to get this time with these beautiful young souls that have been so incredibly assaulted by a world they have yet to understand.  This also comes with the bittersweet knowledge that these kids still have a fighting chance while several of my friends have already had to bury their own children.

Recently I asked these kids a simple question:  “How many of you have found yourself in situations where things started happening that you weren’t comfortable with, but you stuck around, mainly because you felt like you didn’t have a way out?”

They all raised their hands.

Every single…

I really hate to beat a dead horse, but the United States of America is a secular nation; meaning we have no official state religion.  In case you’re confused, that’s a good thing.  It means that you can’t be harassed if your religion doesn’t jibe with the state’s.  You’re free to follow whatever beliefs you hold (or don’t hold, as the case may be), and nobody can tell you otherwise.

You absolutely can say “Merry Christmas”.  Go ahead, say it right now.  I’ll wait.

Did anybody break down your door to arrest you?  Probably not (and if they did, it certainly wasn’t because of your choice of holiday greeting).  You’re free to run down the streets shouting “Merry Christmas” as loud as you please, subject to your town’s noise ordinances.  You can say it to your postman; you can say it to a cashier; you can say it to…

In what way, one can’t help but wonder, must the White House honor God in order to make this meme’s author happy?  I conducted a Google-quest to find peoples’ opinions on what it means to honor God.  While there was some diversity in opinion, most people held that to honor God, you should live your life devoted to Him.  (One author claimed that “honoring God” entailed living a life of sexual purity.  If that’s the case, the White House lost it’s connection to God a long time ago.)

That’s all fine, but at this point I must voice a protest against the message of this meme: While I think it’s fine for a President to honor God, the White House definitely should not.  The President is a person, but the White House is an institution – a symbolic representation of the power of the leader of the executive branch.  As the sole seat of executive…