“A growing number of Americans support a broad concept of equality – “equality as identity” – that treats social distinctions, especially religious distinctions, as arbitrary and unimportant.” In recent times there has been a great contempt for respect for religious beliefs. People fail to understand the boundaries that come with religions and have started dehumanizing these people and their actions to follow a belief system. There have been several cases where religious people have been prosecuted in court for allegedly “breaching” equality laws, but under our constitution, people should be able to practice religion freely without interference from the state. Religious freedom should not be ignored in government systems because freedom is what founded the American nation, not recognizing it denies Americans their rights, and recognizing religion in government systems can help balance religious freedom and laws that they are not about the establishment. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Religious freedom is what led to the American Revolution. People sought freedom and the right to worship who and how they wanted. From the beginning, religion is what has shaped American government and politics. Throughout history there have been conflicts revolving around religious activities, from early persecutions of Christians to modern-day suicide attacks by Muslims, but that doesn't mean that practicing religion brings global problems, it's all the more reason for religions to be recognized by the State. Freedom of religion is the first specified freedom, it is what brought people to America. For the first time the State could not govern what a person had to believe: it was the land of opportunity. Ignoring freedom of religion denies Americans their rights. In court, using religious beliefs as justification doesn't hold up before a jury or judge because it doesn't provide a factual defense, but when over sixty-four percent of Americans practice the doctrine, experiential evidence regarding the faith should be admissible and not rejected as irrelevant. . In a case where a bakery owner denied service to a gay couple, the court was biased and disrespectful of their beliefs and denigrated them. The court was also inconsistent in that they allowed several cases to be heard on grounds of conscience and the court ruled that the party had acted legally, but when it came to religious beliefs, the court turned unfavorable to the case. The early Christians suffered persecution simply because they refused to perform a simple, yet public act, and that is what we see here. An American who has the right to freely practice his beliefs without state interference, yet this case was taken all the way to the Supreme Court. The free exercise law states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." In Employment Division v. Smith, Branton Nestor, writer for the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, found that “the free exercise clause does not generally protect religiously motivated conduct.” Two drug rehabilitation officers lost their jobs after performing a religious ceremony and ingesting peyote unemployment, was denied because it was claimed that the workers had been fired”.