I want to try looking at this topic differently. People with a religious faith ( and I count myself as an Anglican Christian amongst them) must and do accept that governments need to legistlate from time to time on matters which relate to moral beliefs and values. They will also, largely accept that any discussion or debate will expose the ethical philosophies of the participants; differences of moral position which people are rightly at liberty to hold.
The main difficulty is that religious believers are freqently mis-represented in debate as trying to impose their beliefs on others who do not hold them. Now while not denying that there are plenty of examples of that tendency to be found in history and in some counties in the present day, this is not an approach which we find in our own domestic political world.
What religious believers will do in such debates is point out the basic moral values upon which our society has been built. Moral principles are never self-evident and depend upon philosophies of human life. In other words what we should do depends upon who we think we are. Thus a Christian view of the sacredness of the human person is very different from rank individualism and from collectivist Marxism. Thus the believing debate participant will try to find common ground with the non-believer who is also heir to the same commonality of values. For his/her part the believer must recognise that religious ideals may not be held by others, that some who hold them may fail, and that legistlation is needed to address less than ideal situations. For e.g. holding a high doctrine of marriage does not mean having no legal divorce.
We then have to recognise that some people in public life hold philosophies which are a direct threat to traditional values. Here believers will debate with vigour. Perhaps the most worrying of these philosophies is the one which exalts individual autonomy as an absolute principle. For example this stance is taken by the pro-euthanasia camp (often combined with a utilitarian view on financial resources in the NHS) Christians will oppose measures thus based because this philosophy is opposed to the traditional view that what defines the human person is not his/absolute freedom but his/her relationships with others and wider society.
My conclusion is that believers and non-believers alike have a right to free debate in political life and governement office. The airing of their differences is important because the philosophical basis of ethical and political decisions must be examined. Otherwise there is real danger to our heritage of civilised values in national life.
John Palin