There's not much I remember about junior high, but one thing I'll never forget. It's sitting on the bench in front of my gym locker, watching my locker neighbor cry. She was crying about me. She thought I was going to Hell.

I knew she felt sorry for me. I didn't want her to cry, especially about me and about something that wasn't going to change.

There may be a lot of people like my classmate, who believe we'd all be better off if we all were Christian and this were a Christian country. While they might care deeply about others and want to improve their country, they don't understand that the opposite could result if they succeed in establishing a single, government-supported faith.

Christians are guaranteed religious freedom in this country only because all are guaranteed religious freedom. Our Founding Fathers recognized that. Some of the first European settlers in this country came here to freely practice their interpretation of the Christian religion, and the brilliant group of men who wrote the Constitution understood that wouldn't be possible unless all Americans were free to practice the religion of their choice or no religion at all.

That's why the First Amendment to the Constitution includes: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion... or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." That portion of our law clearly calls for separation of church and state, because our founders realized only a secular nation could guarantee freedom for everybody.

They reaffirmed this idea shortly after the country was born in the Treaty of Tripoli (1797). The treaty was negotiated by our first president, George Washington, signed by our second, John Adams, and ratified by at least two-thirds of the Senate. It flatly states: "The Government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."

Conversely, the Constitution doesn't always demand public places be totally free of Christianity or any other religion. There's nothing constitutionally impermissible about public school students praying individually or in a group during noncurricular time, with public secondary schools offering a course on comparative religion or Bible as literature, or with secondary students having student-run religious clubs. None of these examples is coercive or denotes state support for a particular faith or religion.

When religion becomes coercive or is supported directly by the government or becomes part of public policy, it crosses the line. That's what made practicing their faiths in their countries of origin dangerous for some of this country's first settlers.

Despite feeling uncomfortable, and maybe a little excluded by my gym friend who was crying over me, I fully support her right to believe in her own faith and the idea that my faith might doom me to a fiery afterlife. I support that right for you, too, as long as I have the right to my personal faith and freedom from the government telling me it's illegal.

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.