A person or group forcing an opinion on another has been the source of many fights. Why is it so hard to accept that one person has one opinion, and that it differs from someone else’s?

For example, over the past 15 years, five people have been shot and a dozen injured in shootings by anti-abortion extremists.

Fanatics must think they have to resort to violence as a form of expression of their views.

Unfortunately, it is sometimes at the expense of the life or welfare of another living being.

In a different way, the encroachment of personal opinion when religious groups use the government to impose policies and legislation can be deeply offensive to many other people.

Obviously, it is not as extreme as murderous or violent acts, but it is still a form of imposing private, personal beliefs on individuals who hold a different set of values.

This might be a bold statement here in the northern extremes of the Bible Belt, however, groups such as the Christian Coalition work daily to lobby federal and state governments to pass legislation that reflects a strict Christian doctrine.

Not all of us believe in the Christian ideas and dogma these lobbying groups promote.

In a Utopian world, the national government, created as it is by the constitution, should not prefer any one religion or faith over another.

The national government should avoid acknowledging any one denomination, even something as widely accepted as Christianity, because it can offend nonbelievers.

This is the driving force behind the debate for separation of church and state — maintaining a “wall of segregation” between the church and the government to ensure that laws do not reflect a bias.

Many Christians feel that the will of God is associated with social reform; therefore, the individual believer has a religious duty to bring about change to the social condition.

But there are other, less divisive, ways to achieve this goal without promoting sweeping change and inhibiting the choices of the general population.

The use of legislation creating lobbying groups also forces Christian opinions on the national population.

Groups or individuals have every right to condemn abortion and work to establish conditions that would eliminate the necessity for its practice.

These groups should work to implement their views by appealing to the consciences of individuals sharing their beliefs, not by tampering with governmental regulations.

You are entitled to your views, and I am entitled to mine. It does not matter what you believe as long as you are not hurting or infringing on my personal views.

I make choices and you make choices, but tread lightly when you attempt to create laws and rules that remove my choice to not believe what you believe. Then, we can all get along.

But if you are trying to change a social condition in the name of God, making a law or blowing up a medical clinic — that’s not changing my frame of thinking.

Education, understanding, communication and patience will get you much farther than working, either legally through legislation or illegally with violence, to oppress my values and my faith.

The late Carl Sagan, a devout atheist, explained it the best when he said: “We do not have to agree on when and why the Earth was created in order to work to save it.”