saxitoxin wrote: ... this is the only public policy question in the universe in which people routinely reference magic spells and ghosts to support their position.)
Actually, religion overshadows many public policy questions: access to abortion and/or contraception, publicly funded treatment of venereal and even some non-venereal diseases, gay rights, the gay marriage debate, prostitution laws, other vice laws, sex education in schools, other parts of the school curriculum, capital punishment, other forms of punishment, the war on drugs, the criminal code in general, the criminality/non-criminality of euthanisia, eugenics, stem cell research, medical research in general, animal experimentation, animal cruelty laws, science funding and research priorities, arts funding and priorities, public holidays, the calendar in general and many other things as well.
It's quite a list once you stop to think about it. All of these are are impacted in various ways by religious considerations, ranging from almost complete religious polarization (abortion) to "merely" significant meddling (non-specific religious ideas hidden in many little nooks and crannies of the criminal code.)
That's in the West, where we believe in the Separation of Church and State. In the East, where Separation of Church and State doesn't even appear in the public dialogue, the list of religiously-mandated public policies is vastly longer again.
