When John Kennedy ran for President in 1960, I was a student in my tiny hometown high school of 60 students. Virtually everyone in my town, except for my parents, was a Democrat. Almost every one of them, including my parents, voted Republican every chance they got.

I well remember my friends, children of ardent Democrats, telling me no one in their families would vote for Jack Kennedy because he was a Catholic. That appeared to me to be a really bad reason to decide how you'd vote. It seemed like a poor excuse to vote against their party's choice, and a very bigoted excuse at that. A candidate's values and positions on key issues have always been much more important to me than his or her religion.

How different to look at Colorado and American politics today, with three Catholics running for the U.S. Senate from Colorado, and a Catholic, John Kerry, running for President of the United States. In my mind, that is a great victory for democracy and a blow to the pervasive religious intolerance of small towns like mine forty years ago. I never liked the idea that religion should determine one's opportunities in life. How refreshing to have religion, in today's politics, be irrelevant, and to have an individual's views and values be paramount.

I also find it troubling when religious leaders dictate the votes or political actions of their faithful. Or, particularly, when they tell their members that voting for someone who espouses beliefs different from some of their church's teachings prohibits them from participating in communion. It's one thing to encourage adherence to a church's teachings from the pulpit and quite another to demand blind obedience even in the voting booth.

There is a very good reason our constitution contains the First Amendment, prohibiting Congress from making any law regarding the establishment or practice of religion, or limiting freedom of speech and assembly. While we may debate the meaning of that amendment, it is at the heart of our democracy. But, to sustain freedom of religion, speech and thought, religious leaders of all persuasions must also respect freedom of speech and expression, even if they don't like it, particularly in the voting booth.

It's just as disturbing to me that French law now prohibits school children from displaying any symbol of their religious beliefs. Muslim girls cannot wear headscarves; Jewish students cannot wear yarmulkes; and Christian children cannot wear "large crosses". That is a gross infringement of religious expression, which is a hallmark of a free, democratic society.

In another instance, a New York City policeman, who is a Sikh, has been told he cannot wear a turban, which is required by his religion. "You can either keep your turban or your badge," the police chief told him. Meanwhile, Muslim policewomen may wear headscarves. The Sikh policeman has filed a lawsuit claiming the city is violating his First Amendment right to freely express his religion. The danger here is that a government can pick and choose which religious symbols, something deeply meaningful to the adherents of that religious tradition, are acceptable and which are not. The next step could be reverting to the days when being a Catholic, much less a Muslim or a Sikh, kept you from getting a job or running for public office.

Both sides of the separation of church and state are responsible for maintaining that divide. Without that separation, discrimination because of religious beliefs will undermine our democracy. Whether it is the police chief in New York City or the Catholic Bishop in Pueblo, Colorado, respecting each individual's right to express his or her beliefs and values, in thought, dress or vote, is central to our democratic system. Otherwise, we may find that someone whose values and positions on issues are antithetical to our own gets to dictate how we practice and express our beliefs. And that would mean the collapse of the First Amendment and the heart of our democracy. Both sides of this political divide must respect individual and institutional differences of opinion if freedom is to prevail.