adroomi,
First of all, let me say Sorry, it's a bit wordy...
You said that "What rankles most, is the insistance that the First Amendment guarantee of free religion includes the choice to follow no religion, thus any tolerance by the government of any one religion is seen as a violation." When specifying a religious choice, if someone chooses None, then their religious view is the absence of religion. And that religious view is being forced on those that have a different religious view because of the ACLU. I have to follow the religious beliefs of None. I'm not saying atheism is a religion, but it is a religious view, and the government cannot enforce any one religious view on it's citizens.
The 1st amendment says:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
There is nothing about separation of Church and State in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, or the Amendments, and, if you take it as it is written (as so many do when it comes to the speech and press clauses) then the government could force you to choose a religion, they just couldn't tell you which religion to choose. Or, a more liberal stance would be that the government can't show preference to one religion and one religion only. If you replace the word "religion" in the previous sentence with the words "religious view", you can easily see the what the ACLU and the Supreme Court did (and are doing) is unconstitutional because it is forcing upon me the religious view of no religion. The state can put up a Christmas tree, but not a Cross or a Creche, because they are religious symbols. So the non-religious symbol of a Christmas tree is the only symbol the state displays (ok, with some reindeer and a jolly old fat man named Saint Nick....ooops, I meant the secular Santa) but by displaying that, they are forcing the non-religious view on me everytime I see the Fat Man and the Christmas tree.
That is not tolerance, which is what the 1st Amendment was striving for. It's not that they can't display religious symbols, they just can't display only one religion's symbols while excluding the display of others. But, they also aren't forced to provide (nor should they ever) a religious symbol to display. So if my pastor pays for a Cross in the public park, the state wouldn't pay for a Star of David, but if someone wanted to supply it, it would be displayed with no qualms.
Also, note that it says "CONGRESS shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof", that's very important because the 10th Amendment says "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." Now that leads into a whole 'nother area of discussion on this...since Congress is forbidden, then that right belongs to the states.
