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I don't see how you expect the injunctions of your religion to have any force at all for non-believers.

Good question, WackyKat. I am not suggesting that I should impose my religious views on others; I should convince people of them. Obviously, I can't just throw out "because God says so" when trying to convince an atheist as to why a particular behavior is harmful.

And indeed, God seems to prohibit things that society frankly has no problem with. But my faith tells me that God's laws are not to deprive but to protect. From that underpinning I can search for logical and verifiable reasons why that is so, and attempt to convince others of them.

Obviously, I would prefer to convince someone of faith in Christ; but barring that, convincing him/her to abstain from behaviors that are harmful is worthwhile. And if enough people become convinced of a particular "sin" (even if they choose not to label it in that way), then it becomes appropriate to consider codifying it as law.

It may sound like I'm walking a fine line between theocracy and freedom here. But the thing is, everyone gets their morality from somewhere. I would argue that man gets morality from God and then chooses to corrupt it. Others may feel morality can be completely reasoned out, free of theistic influence. But whatever basis they have, they must enter the arena of ideas, join with others who share their beliefs, convince others who do not, in order to form a society of laws.

Regarding the use of the word "theocracy", I'd like to include Webster's definition, to straighten out some misconceptions:

"A government of a state by immediate divine guidance or by officials regarded as divinely guided". Another definition I've read (don't have it word for word) is government by unelected members of religious heirarchy.

A government with laws based on moral absolutes as given by the religions of the world is NOT a theocracy. This misuse of the word "theocracy" is a ploy by secularists to make people feel that any reference to moral absolutes is siding with the Taliban and primitivism.

What secularists want is to reject out-of-hand ANY reference to moral absolutes, with specific regard to anything that has the slightest scent of morality originating from religion. They are really absolute about their relativism.

In fact, they are hypocrites, because they want to impose their total lack of moral absolutism upon the rest of us by force. And their supposedly "moral relativism" is just as, if not more so, absolutist as moral absolutes stemming originally from religious codes. They are just the inverse of them.