Tuesday - March 31, 2015

RFRA: When Bad Law Gets Worse

Why is there a Wookie living on Endor? It don’t make sense! You must acquit!!

Huh??

WTF?

So I did a little digging, and came up with the federal law. And read it. And read it again. And then shook my head, wiped my eyes, cleaned my glasses and read it again. What on earth are they talking about? So it was time to do some research. And that’s where I’ve been the past two days.

At this point, I think I have a slight understanding of what’s going on. The whole thing is crap.

And then I had a small epiphany when I realized this week’s media dust storm is remarkably similar to the Left’s reaction to what happened when Clinton passed the Assault Weapons Ban*. A knee jerk reaction feel-good law was passed to protect a very tiny special interest group. But laws are for everyone, so now a much-vilified group of people (aka regular Americans) are using this law to protect themselves against the unrelenting abuse laid on them by Universal Gay Incorporated, and the unhinged lunatic Left can’t stand it. They are hoist on their own petards and screaming about having a bad case of shrapnel ass. Gee, too bad, huh?

Once upon a time, long long ago in a galaxy far away, there was a situation ... Employment Division v. Smith, otherwise known as the Smith case ...

Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon vs. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), is a United States Supreme Court case that determined that the state could deny unemployment benefits to a person fired for violating a state prohibition on the use of peyote, even though the use of the drug was part of a religious ritual. Although states have the power to accommodate otherwise illegal acts done in pursuit of religious beliefs, they are not required to do so.

The majority opinion was delivered by Justice Scalia. The First Amendment forbids government from prohibiting the “free exercise” of religion. This means, of course, that government may not regulate beliefs as such, either by compelling certain beliefs or forbidding them. Religious belief frequently entails the performance of physical acts—assembling for worship, consumption of bread and wine, abstaining from certain foods or behaviors. Government could no more ban the performance of these physical acts when engaged in for religious reasons than it could ban the religious beliefs that compel those actions in the first place. “It would doubtless be unconstitutional, for example, to ban the casting of statues that are to be used for worship purposes or to prohibit bowing down before a golden calf.”

But Oregon’s ban on the possession of peyote is not a law specifically aimed at a physical act engaged in for a religious reason. Rather, it is a law that applies to everyone who might possess peyote, for whatever reason—a “neutral law of general applicability,” in the Court’s phrasing. The Court characterized Smith’s and Black’s argument as an attempt to use their religious motivation to use peyote in order to place themselves beyond the reach of Oregon’s neutral, generally applicable ban on the possession of peyote.

Well that makes sense, doesn’t it? The right of my fist to swing around ends just off the end of your nose. I’m just moving, but if I hit you it’s assault.

The problem lay in the solution. The plaintiffs were advised to seek relief through the legislature. And they did. And the Legislature foolishly played the Special Interest card (via Chuck Schumer [D]), and came up with that junk law quoted above. What it means, is that if you claim “religious belief” you get a pass from the law. Seriously.

This didn’t last. Perhaps without pointing out that there is no constitutional prohibition against stupid, a SCOTUS challenge to the new law soon had Justice Scalia opining that, as a federal statute, this fiasco was limited to federal purview. In other words, he was trying to do some damage control.

Thus it was left to the several States to duplicate the law if they so chose. And I guess some of them did at first. And at first I guess at first a few Native Americans were thus allowed to trip their brains out, like Timothy Leary in a tie-dye painted interstellar teepee, grooving with the Gitche Manitou in an evergreen-clad phase space. Fine. No harm, no foul, and there were only a few of those guys anyway.

Fast Forward 20 years to our present era of Super Citizens, where those of preferred pigmentation have far more rights than you do, but even they must grovel at the feet of the atypically aroused, aka the Gay Mafia. To hell with playing the Race Card and trumping your hand. Playing the Gay Card trumps your hand, his hand, her hand, and the entire deck. Heck, it trumps the Bicycle Playing Card factory. Gone are the happy days of we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it tolerance. Now we have instant total submission, and the Gay Card is so big it needs to be towed around by a billboard truck. Dropping that card can smash entire school systems and businesses. Bakery Burning has even become a Social Justice Warrior hobby, with public stoning and a trip to Camp Ayers for anyone in that industry unwilling to use icing to paint scenes of perversity on their cakes and pies.

Until now.

What a surprise. It turns out that the RFRA laws actually do allow businesses to refuse such activities because it goes against their own religious beliefs. It probably works for Hobby Lobby and the kind of health insurance they provide their workers. Laws are for everyone. That’s one of our core beliefs. And now the Left is pitching a fit like (almost*) never before.

Fuck em. With a dirty burning stick.

RFRA laws are wrong. Period. They all need to be thrown out. Federal and State. No religion gets you an out from any other law. Ever. Period. And every business ought to have the right to refuse service whenever they want. The time of “cards” needs to end.

You don’t think so? Great. I’m starting up the NJ Highway Church of Azteca. It is my new combination faith that
A) It is my religious duty to raid my neighbors, steal their children, sell them to the priests and cut their hearts out on the altar as a sacrifice to appease my god CoaxialCoatiMundi; and
B) It is my religious right to commute on the highways at 120mph regardless of weather or traffic load (my religion is growing; I already have half the state believing in Tenet B) as a means of being close to my god. And I mean close; if I don’t make it past that school bus full of screaming children, I’ll be face to face with my god just like that!
PS - I’m moving in right next door to you. Laws against kidnapping, slavery, murder, speeding, and reckless driving don’t apply to me. Because Religion. You aren’t allowed to defend yourself, and I can sue your pants off if you even look at me in an “uncomfortable” way.

* The AWB was a useless, complex mess. Another stupid law from the Clinton era. The idea was to disarm law abiding Americans by making “military style” semi-automatic rifles illegal by vilifying them as “Assault Weapons” if they had a Chinese take-out menu of physical features. Aside from a list of guns banned by name for being especially evil, any other gun could be banned if it had two features from Column A and/or one feature from Column B. It completely ignored the fact that, up to that time, almost none of these weapons had been used to commit “Gun Crimes”. The firearms makers were supposed to just up and die from fear of this overwhelming potent legislation. Instead, they followed the letter of the law, and ground off the bayonet lugs, and pinned on the flash suppressors instead of screwing them on. Then they went right back to selling guns, only at a much higher price, because virtuous Americans could read the writing on the wall and suddenly wanted these previously less popular weapons like never before. To this day the lunatic left is pissed off that “they broke the law!!!” by adhering to the very letter of it. And to this day the GOP members (at least) of the Legislature know that voting for stupid gun control laws is a guaranteed way to lose the next election. Witness what just happened the other week, when the ATF pulled a sneaky and tried to ban the tens of millions of rounds of 5.56mm military surplus “M855” ammunition (the very “death hose bullets” used by those “Assault Weapons") by “careless” omission. Obama’s token flunky head of the ATF lost his job, and nearly the entire (R) Legislature signed a strongly worded letter to the ATF that said, in effect, “back the fuck off”.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/31/2015 at 12:56 PM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Government •  
• Comments (4) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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