Church and State

Today I read an online article that touched on the subject of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and Proposition 8 that was passed. The main emphasis of the article, to me as a reader anyway, was a protest to religious supported laws, or laws that are enacted not based on "civil rights" but a matter of what particular voters consider as being moral or not. In his argument, the author expresses his belief that laws cannot and should not be passed based on their considered morality but rather on civil rights and then uses examples of other such instances (i.e. beliefs during the civil right movement in the 50's-60's) to further his opinion. While reading this article some questions came to my mind.
The first thing I thought about was the old statement "separation of church and state". This was instituted in the days of our fore fathers. The concept behind it was that no church could have Constitutional power to impose it's beliefs on any person. However, many of the laws that organized and enacted had basis on some religious belief. Laws enacted then and laws existent now are based on a principle of right versus wrong, good versus evil, protection of the innocent and justice for all. We have laws against murder, stealing, rape, abuse, kidnapping, extortion, and a plethora of other laws that, one can look at it this way, limit what we can and cannot do. My question now is where did these laws come from? Or where does the concept of good and bad come from to perpetuate the need for such laws?
Who are we to say what is right and wrong? Does not enacting a law against murder take away the freedom I have to chose to take the life of another? Yes I might be infringing upon the right of another and the Constitution grants us the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (originally property), but who decided that we have those rights in the first place? Who decided that humans have a right to anything? Are we not just another organism belonging to the animal kingdom? Does not the gazelle have a right to life? If so, then why is there not a law in the animal kingdom that prohibits the lion from killing the gazelle for the lion's personal gain? If this is a world inhabited by the product of evolution then "survival of the fittest" is our adage and rights be damned!
Yet, we do have rights. Our founding fathers outlined a system of laws based on what they believed our rights to be...those beliefs stemming from what their own personal, religious beliefs were. They were Christians who followed the 10 commandments, and thus implemented many of those commandments as law (murder, stealing, etc). Again, the laws they enacted were based on what they considered to be good or bad. And thus even though there was a call for separation of church and state we see that the original laws of this land were taken from the religious beliefs of it's organizers.
So today we have laws being written, proposed and voted upon by the people. Those who feel strongly opposed to certain laws because of religious beliefs are ridiculed and labeled as bigots, racists, closed minded along with an innumerable amount of other terms. Those who support laws that are widely opposed by the majority are seen as heroes, visionaries, free thinkers, progresivists and other highly acclaimed accolades. They use terms like "civil rights" as their swords and "racism, sexism, and oppression" as their shields when it suits their needs. I would like to see these people argue for civil rights when the pedophiles of America argue that it is their "civil right" to sexually assault young children because "it's who I am, I was born that way" or when serial killers argue that because they have a psychiatric condition (antisocial personality disorder, conduct disorder, borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder) they have a "civil right" to carry out their acts of violence. My question is where is the call for civil rights when a doctor in Kansas is allowed to perform more than 60,000 late term abortions for reasons other than medically necessary? We have laws and activists that protect against animal cruelty and yet proponents who believe that a woman has the right to chose to keep or terminate a creature that that looks human, has human tissue, and genetic material that establish it as human because it's her body, her life and her right. Where are the rights of the fetus?
In other words, civil rights are based upon what we consider to be good or bad. You cannot establish laws that protect the rights of others without first establishing the concept of what is good and what is bad. Where do you get your sense of good or bad? For me, I get it from what I believe to be a true religion and so I will be guided by those beliefs. If I believe gay marriage to be bad then I will vote against a law that looks to allow it. If I believe murder to be bad then I will vote for any law that punishes murder. Men and women are entitled to their separate opinions and beliefs and they will vote based on the beliefs, and seeing how there will always be separate beliefs there will continue to be a never ending struggle about, that's right folks you guessed it, what's RIGHT and WRONG.