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I by no means suggest that church and state *should* be linked, only that at a fundamental level, they usually are. As you say a person's morals are often derived from their religion, and it is my conclusion that these morals are often used to hatch a community's laws.
The perfect example is my place of residence, in the heart of Mormon Utah. There are many ridiculous laws which are so Mormon-slanted that it can make a person ill... such as laws prohibiting the purchase of alcohol on Sundays. There is even a law that dictates that auto dealers cannot be open for business on both Saturday and Sunday... an obvious trap since no auto dealer who wishes to stay in business here will choose Sunday over Saturday. Nasty, eh? Such laws have little direct impact on me, but I still find them unsettling. An even more ghastly idea than a police state is one with a religion at the wheel.
If I seem to have represented the argument that laws *should* be based on morals, then I have poorly communicated my thoughts. I simply argue that at the fundamental level, a law is an attempted reflection of a community majority's morals, often unsuccessfully. I am not trying to answer the question of "What should laws represent?" but rather "Where did laws come from?" An important distinction.
As far as my thoughts on what laws should be based on, that is a broader subject than I intend to broach at this time, outside of a hearty agreement with the excerpt you included from our Constitution's preamble earlier.
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