Religious Freedom

[cherrypoptart]

Just for fun... got a kick out of how they end their prayers.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/guy-wears-colander-driver-apos-162151403.html#mycomments

A Chandler, Arizona, man now has an official driver’s license featuring a photo of him wearing a colander, the Arizona Republic reported Thursday.

Corbett told the Republic that his quest was all in the name of religious freedom. As a Pastafarian in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Corbett said he wanted to ease the way for people of other religions to don the headwear of their choice, such as a hijab or a turban, without opposition.

[Pete at Home]

No problem with the hijab, but the burqa is a social disease and a threat. Elizabeth Smart was kept,captive in plain sight in a bursa. Entering a court house, movie theater, church, etc, in a burqa, Kim outfit, or any other face and full body. Covering should be illegal as a menace to public statement.  You don't know who or what is under that bloody thing.

Halal and kosher should likewise provide no defense for public health hazards that breed rats and disease.  And a mohel better be licensed for minor surgery, and even a fundamentalist mohel can sing tradition until he is blue in the face but he better not piss on the boy after circumcision. The Mormons can't "excommunicate" someone who already informed church records that she was quitting her membership. Fundamentalist Protestants can't impregnate and marry off 11 year olds with parental consent unless they move to,Florida or 21 other states where that's legal.... Oops.

[TheDrake]

If a burqa is voluntary, nobody should have problem with it. And nobody should have to know who or what is under a drape. Nobody's business, just like if you want to wear a speedo on a public beach.

Laws should be indifferent to religion. There should be no religious exception to health codes, health plans, immunization, or any other law of the land. If there were a law that you must expose your face, which there really isn't, then that would be the same.

[ScottF]

What do you think of laws that limit the amount of tint you can have on your front driver/passenger car windows?

[TheDeamon]

No problem with the hijab, but the burqa is a social disease and a threat. Elizabeth Smart was kept,captive in plain sight in a bursa. Entering a court house, movie theater, church, etc, in a burqa, Kim outfit, or any other face and full body. Covering should be illegal as a menace to public statement.  You don't know who or what is under that bloody thing.

I'm trying to decide if this is an argument for compulsory nudity or not in certain situations. Would love to see a naked guy try to smuggle something onto an airplane.

More seriously, on facial coverings, there is a somewhat compelling argument to be had in regards to that specifically. Without even getting into the whole matter of the psychology behind such practices.

[Pete at Home]

If there were a law that you must expose your face, which there really isn't, then that would be the same.

That's what I'm saying.  That after the Elizabeth Smart incident, and given our history with the KKK, face masks should be illegal except for narrow time/place exceptions (in a play, for instance).

If a burqa is voluntary, nobody should have problem with it.

You don't know if it's voluntary since you can't see the person's face.  See Elizabeth Smart.

  And nobody should have to know who or what is under a drape.

Nobody's business, just like if you want to wear a speedo on a public beach.

Nonsense again, see Elizabeth Smart.  Also, someone in a Burkha could more easily carry and aim heavy weaponry before being perceived.  Not to mention known dangerous fugitives.  It's unsafe, period, and that has nothing to do with the religion.

Laws should be indifferent to religion.

Not possible or useful in the absolute.  Freedom of religion could not be maintained with indifference to religion.  Also, separation of church and state could not be maintained if state "indifference" to religion made it unable to perceive the difference between religion and other aspects of culture.
 

There should be no religious exception to health codes, health plans, immunization, or any other law of the land.

I disagree. Conscientious objectors, allowing Catholics and Native Americans to take their sacraments despite alcohol and drug laws.  And compulsive immunization  in conjunction with Congress' law that you cannot sue a vaccine company for brain damage due to the vaccine is a third/fifth/Ninth amendment violation as well as an authoritarian atrocity.

[Pete at Home]

An amusing inconsistency by US diplomats.

[TheDrake]

That's what I'm saying.  That after the Elizabeth Smart incident, and given our history with the KKK, face masks should be illegal except for narrow time/place exceptions (in a play, for instance).

Sounds like a war on Halloween.

 

There should be no religious exception to health codes, health plans, immunization, or any other law of the land.

I disagree. Conscientious objectors, allowing Catholics and Native Americans to take their sacraments despite alcohol and drug laws.  And compulsive immunization  in conjunction with Congress' law that you cannot sue a vaccine company for brain damage due to the vaccine is a third/fifth/Ninth amendment violation as well as an authoritarian atrocity.
[/quote]

The correct answer in any of these cases, is to make everyone free to make those choices, not just those who can use their religion as a shield.

[Seriati]

The correct answer in any of these cases, is to make everyone free to make those choices, not just those who can use their religion as a shield.

Are you implying that the "correct answer" to any common law is to let anyone opt out for any reason?  Sounds like anarchy.  The religious exemptions is there because it represents a conflict for which there can be no middle ground, you either permit certain activities or you outlaw the practice of that religion (and then you discover if that starts a war). 

[TheDrake]

Not what I'm saying, Seriati. Religious grounds shouldn't carry any more weight than Personal Moral grounds. It is either a thing that people must be prevented from doing, or something that people (all people) should be allowed to do.

Rather than give all people the right to back out of a law, I'm suggesting that those laws should either exist or be enforced equally. RFRA's were and are a terrible idea. This essentially means that if you can let some people back out of a law (like letting Catholics drink a glass of wine) then averyone should get to have a glass.

The "compelling state interest" idea should be used to test all laws. If there is only a mild state interest, you shouldn't be making the law.

[Pete at Home]

That's what I'm saying.  That after the Elizabeth Smart incident, and given our history with the KKK, face masks should be illegal except for narrow time/place exceptions (in a play, for instance).

Sounds like a war on Halloween.

No, because (1) there are plenty of disguises that don't use masks, (2) private parties can use burkhas, sheet-heads or whatever, and (3) communities can craft time/place exemptions for Halloween and another 1-day holidays, though I would not recommend it in a big city.



 

There should be no religious exception to health codes, health plans, immunization, or any other law of the land.

I disagree. Conscientious objectors, allowing Catholics and Native Americans to take their sacraments despite alcohol and drug laws.  And compulsive immunization  in conjunction with Congress' law that you cannot sue a vaccine company for brain damage due to the vaccine is a third/fifth/Ninth amendment violation as well as an authoritarian atrocity.
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The correct answer in any of these cases, is to make everyone free to make those choices, not just those who can use their religion as a shield.[/quote]

That makes sense for immunization, but not for sacramental drug and alcohol exceptions, because the religious structure is not only a "shield" against the law, but a structural safeguard.  Taking mescaline in a formal sacramental community involves having people there to take care of you, and allowing a 12 year old Catholic to sip the communion wine under the priest's supervision avoids abuse as well.  If you're saying that a nonreligious organization should be able to create similar safe settings, I'm OK with that, but it still exists because of the religious precedent.

This essentially means that if you can let some people back out of a law (like letting Catholics drink a glass of wine) then averyone should get to have a glass.

It's not a glass; it's a sip, and it's supervised.  if one has to change the facts to fit the argument, it's not a good argument. 

I grew up in Mexico where kids are allowed to purchase liquor, and it's not a nice picture.  The kids whose parents had carefully monitored and given bits of alcohol to when younger, like a small cup of wine at dinner, or a sip of communion wine, were generally the ones who didn't screw up.  The ones whose parents didn't set any rules were the worst, and in middle ground were those who like my parents set absolute restrictions, no alcohol at all.

[Fenring]

Religious grounds shouldn't carry any more weight than Personal Moral grounds.

That doesn't sound quite right to me. It feels like a false equivalence. I guess if you want to call a 'religion' something some person happens to believe, then I guess from that standpoint calling it a religion or an opinion could be roughly equal. However the major religions are a lot more intertwined into every aspect of life than you could possibly say would be the case of a guy having opinions on various things. If you barred a personal with moral opinions from following through on one of them it might irritate him but it wouldn't undermine all the rest of his beliefs simultaneously. But if you prevent a religious person from doing something fundamental to their faith then it doesn't merely irritate them on that one point but otherwise leave their religious practice intact; it in fact effectively outlaws the religion. The difficulty here, of course, is in any discussion about how fundamental some practices really are to a religion, and how we shouldn't even be having to make that determination by fiat.

It is either a thing that people must be prevented from doing, or something that people (all people) should be allowed to do.

I'm not sure if having exceptions is really such a big deal so long as it isn't carried out in an abusive way. Some things should no doubt be outlawed no matter whose religion says what. If a religion said to carry a gun at all times, that would not convince us to let members of that religion bring the guns into a school. On the other hand, if there's a no hat policy in a school, I do see a case for the law protecting Jewish people (or Muslims, or whomever) from wearing a headdress as their beliefs dictate. It's really not too difficult to understand why some kids would be allowed it while the rest can't wear their baseball cap. The matter of totally covering one's face seems to me less like an issue of "everyone should be treated equally" and more one of "is this a security threat", which strikes me as being another matter entirely. If police are unable to visually identify someone at all times due to their dress, that strikes me as having potential for being a security threat, but I guess the danger is that people might use that as an excuse to persecute people who just make them uncomfortable. The argument for it being a security threat would have to be compelling though, and not just "this feels like it ought to be able to count as a security threat."

[Pete at Home]

Religious grounds shouldn't carry any more weight than Personal Moral grounds.

I don't have a problem with giving anyone a personal moral exemption to do anything that can be done for a religious exemption, but that's the interworking of freedom of religion via RFRA and the no religious establishment clause.  Religion creates the exemption, and then the exemption expands to encompass conscience.  That's how it should work, anyway, and sometimes does.

[TheDrake]

On the other hand, if there's a no hat policy in a school, I do see a case for the law protecting Jewish people (or Muslims, or whomever) from wearing a headdress as their beliefs dictate. It's really not too difficult to understand why some kids would be allowed it while the rest can't wear their baseball cap.

Clearly, you are not familiar with Red Sox Nation, which has a large number of fervent adherents, sacraments, rites, and for whom there are 162 services during the regular season.

The matter of totally covering one's face seems to me less like an issue of "everyone should be treated equally" and more one of "is this a security threat", which strikes me as being another matter entirely. If police are unable to visually identify someone at all times due to their dress, that strikes me as having potential for being a security threat, but I guess the danger is that people might use that as an excuse to persecute people who just make them uncomfortable. The argument for it being a security threat would have to be compelling though, and not just "this feels like it ought to be able to count as a security threat."

I'd lean in the favor of "too bad about your religion", but then I would do the same thing in the other cases. Just make sure that you don't let everyone else run around with scarves, ski masks, and other covering while you're banning covered faces. You're going to make a lot of people in the North pretty mad though, I don't remember too many people in NH exposing their faces for much of the winter.

Be clear - if you don't exempt all those other things, you are not only being discriminatory but also ineffective from a security standpoint. If you have allowed face coverings and disallowed ones, then your enemies will just wear an approved one.

[Seriati]

It's funny how all those people so long ago fled to this country so that they may practice their religions free from harassment and government oppression, how they felt it was such an important right that they included, among other places, as the first amendment to the US Constitution (without which the Constitution itself would not have passed) and in many many other state constitutions, only to see a few hundred years later the same attitude from which they fled arise notwithstanding that express protection.

If you don't agree that sincere religious beliefs get special treatment, you're more than welcome to get a Constitutional amendment.  In the meantime, we'd have even more protests if every law included carveouts that were tied to specific religious grounds.

[TheDrake]

If you don't agree that sincere religious beliefs get special treatment, you're more than welcome to get a Constitutional amendment.  In the meantime, we'd have even more protests if every law included carveouts that were tied to specific religious grounds.

Of course we would, because then it would be more public and open. As opposed to letting random unelected judges play religious roulette with what qualifies as a compelling public interest without introducing bias against various other religions and religious practice.

[Pete at Home]

On the other hand, if there's a no hat policy in a school, I do see a case for the law protecting Jewish people (or Muslims, or whomever) from wearing a headdress as their beliefs dictate. It's really not too difficult to understand why some kids would be allowed it while the rest can't wear their baseball cap.

Clearly, you are not familiar with Red Sox Nation, which has a large number of fervent adherents, sacraments, rites, and for whom there are 162 services during the regular season.

Let them apply for a religious exemption, then. What's the problem?   The only people hurt by freedom of religion are those whose religion is so vain and presumptuous that they cannot bring themselves to admit that it's their religion rather than "just the way things are."

The matter of totally covering one's face seems to me less like an issue of "everyone should be treated equally" and more one of "is this a security threat", which strikes me as being another matter entirely.

Precisely my point.  That's why your proposal of having only one standard for examining constitutionality of all laws doesn't work.  Government does not exist only for mitigating security threats, and for such less severe issues, less severe standards should exist.

The argument for it being a security threat would have to be compelling though, and not just "this feels like it ought to be able to count as a security threat."

I'd lean in the favor of "too bad about your religion", but then I would do the same thing in the other cases. Just make sure that you don't let everyone else run around with scarves, ski masks, and other covering while you're banning covered faces. You're going to make a lot of people in the North pretty mad though, I don't remember too many people in NH exposing their faces for much of the winter.

I don't recall a lot of suicide bombings or other DAESH or KKK attacks in New Hampshire either, Drake.  What, were you thinking I was proposing a federal law?  I'm saying that cities should be able to write their laws with reasonable time/place exceptions.  See above.  I hope you aren't married to the idea that the same dress code should apply in Miami as in a population 10 village in rural alaska. 

Be clear - if you don't exempt all those other things, you are not only being discriminatory but also ineffective from a security standpoint. If you have allowed face coverings and disallowed ones, then your enemies will just wear an approved one.

Sure.  If someone wears a ski mask, full body winter coat, and gloves in Miami, I assure you that I'd consider that at least as suspicious as a Burkha.  More suspicious, probably.

I certainly hope you're not suggesting that a federal government's role in setting dress codes.  They don't allow someone to take their passport photo in a ski mask, so they shouldn't in a Burkha either.

[cherrypoptart]

I've always thought that allowing people special dispensation under the law because of their religion is precisely the same thing as discriminating against everyone else based on their different religion or lack of religion and is just as unConstitutional as discriminating against someone based on their specific religion, so if that is Pete's position too then I agree with it. In other words, if one religion gets to hide their face then everyone should otherwise you are discriminating against all non-Muslims and discriminating against everyone because they aren't of a certain religion is just as bad, maybe even worse because it's discriminating against even more people, than targeting a single religion. The similarity to racial quotas disguised as equal opportunity isn't precise but it's like saying the only way to get rid of racial discrimination is to discriminate based on race. The only way to get rid of religious discrimination is to discriminate based on religion? Not buying it.

[Fenring]

The matter of totally covering one's face seems to me less like an issue of "everyone should be treated equally" and more one of "is this a security threat", which strikes me as being another matter entirely.

Precisely my point.  That's why your proposal of having only one standard for examining constitutionality of all laws doesn't work.  Government does not exist only for mitigating security threats, and for such less severe issues, less severe standards should exist.

My proposal? Which proposal was that? Did you mean Drake?

[Seriati]

Of course we would, because then it would be more public and open. As opposed to letting random unelected judges play religious roulette with what qualifies as a compelling public interest without introducing bias against various other religions and religious practice.

Lol, it's in the open, if you pay any attention to the cases on it and the established precedents.  For most part there are pretty clear rules on when religious practices trump laws and when laws have to yield to religious practices.  The real risk of letting the courts determine these issues - which honestly, is the point of having courts consider them to inject nuance into the situation - is when we turn the courts into blunt political instruments rather than neutral arbiters.  That's when you get the really damaging results.

I mean we just had a highly controversial Hobby Lobby case, and it would have been controversial no matter which way it was decided.  Why did we have it?  We had it because the Obama administration thought the time was right to win a court case taking away religious freedom so they deliberately wrote the law without reasonable religious exemptions.  They miscalculated, but not by much.

[Pete at Home]

The matter of totally covering one's face seems to me less like an issue of "everyone should be treated equally" and more one of "is this a security threat", which strikes me as being another matter entirely.

Precisely my point.  That's why your proposal of having only one standard for examining constitutionality of all laws doesn't work.  Government does not exist only for mitigating security threats, and for such less severe issues, less severe standards should exist.

My proposal? Which proposal was that? Did you mean Drake?

Drake's proposal. I thought I was speaking to Drake.

[TheDrake]

I'm with Scalia. Empahasis mine.

These two Justices were both dissenters from a 1990 decision, Employment Division v. Smith, in which the Court refused to exempt members of an American Indian religion that uses peyote in its central ritual from a state law making criminal any use of peyote and other hallucinogenic drugs.

In that decision, written by Justice Scalia, the Court announced the principle to which Justice Kennedy's majority opinion adhered today: laws that happen to make a religious practice difficult or even impossible are constitutional as long as they are "neutral" and of "general applicability."

[Seriati]

TheDrake, I don't think your really with Scalia on this issue. 

[TheDrake]

Why do you not think so? I haven't read all his opinions - just the one quoted below.

[D.W.]

I expect there are already people racking their brains trying to figure out how to thread the needle of freedom of religion and mandating you have your face exposed.  Why?  Facial recognition.  As computers get faster and faster and cameras become more and more ubiquitous, the government(s) won't be able to help themselves when it comes to leveraging this tool. 

To do so effectively, they need to stop people from countering it.  What is now for some religions or protesters or rioting mobs may soon become privacy minded fashion ware. 

Unless that's illegal...

[Seriati]

D.W. you don't need to wrack your brains on that.  It's already established law that the government could pass a law of neutral application, even if it impacts a particular religion - unless the real purpose was to impact that religion, for a legitimate purpose like security.  Whether such a law is legitimate is not clear to me, but religious objections wouldn't be the problem getting it overturned.

[Pete at Home]

I expect there are already people racking their brains trying to figure out how to thread the needle of freedom of religion and mandating you have your face exposed.  Why?  Facial recognition.  As computers get faster and faster and cameras become more and more ubiquitous, the government(s) won't be able to help themselves when it comes to leveraging this tool. 

To do so effectively, they need to stop people from countering it.  What is now for some religions or protesters or rioting mobs may soon become privacy minded fashion ware. 

Shouldn't the government be trying to prevent known terrorists from walking around with big backpacks during large public gatherings?  There's no fundamental constitutional right to conceal your identity while walking down a public street.  Traditionally in America, People wear masks in a bank to rob a bank.  They wear masks to lynch.

[D.W.]

I think it goes beyond just known terrorists Pete.  I think that our instinctual response to a masked individual is suspicion if not fear.  That response developed for a reason.  I'm all for this type of law. 

I was just pointing out that when it happens, it will be because the government wants to spy on us and likely marketing wants to target us personally as well.   

It won't be to stop some barbaric religious practice that may or may not oppress someone, or be to put us at ease from being confronted by a mysterious/scary mask. 

[Pete at Home]

I think it goes beyond just known terrorists Pete.  I think that our instinctual response to a masked individual is suspicion if not fear.  That response developed for a reason.  I'm all for this type of law. 

I was just pointing out that when it happens, it will be because the government wants to spy on us and likely marketing wants to target us personally as well.   

It won't be to stop some barbaric religious practice that may or may not oppress someone, or be to put us at ease from being confronted by a mysterious/scary mask. 

I agree it's not just terrorism; that's why I mentioned robbing banks and the in-plain-sight concealment of Elizabeth Smart.  And I agree that like every other measure that the government enacts to protect us, that it will abuse this measure like it did the Patriot Act, like it does the sex abuser statutes, etc.  Facial recognition software may very well be the prophesied mark of the beast without which one cannot buy nor sell.  And advertisers will use it to try to get known recovered gambling and alcohol addicts to relapse and spend.  I agree that it's a good thing to count the price before paying the piper, and that in this case, the piper must be paid.