Tangled issue in First Amendment law: when is a professed ‘faith’ protected, and when is it not? Faith is unknowable after all. Religions cannot be tested for truth by outsiders. Now comes Judge John Gerrard of the District of Nebraska, holding that an inmate’s claim he’s being denied equal treatment for his religion based on the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) is half-baked:
This is not a question of theology: it is a matter of basic reading comprehension. The FSM Gospel is plainly a work of satire, meant to entertain while making a pointed political statement. To read it as religious doctrine would be little different from grounding a “religious exercise” on any other work of fiction. A prisoner could just as easily read the works of Vonnegut or Heinlein and claim it as his holy book, and demand accommodation of Bokononism or the Church of All Worlds. 6 See, Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle (Dell Publishing 1988) (1963); Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land (Putnam Publ’g Grp. 1961). Of course, there are those who contend—and Cavanaugh is probably among them—that the Bible or the Koran are just as fictional as those books. It is not always an easy line to draw. But there must be a line beyond which a practice is not “religious” simply because a plaintiff labels it as such. The Court concludes that FSMism is on the far side of that line.
Spotted via ars Technica
I am sure that, after appeals on both sides, thru the years, the Supreme Court would give the nod, on a 4/2 vote ( still in need of the 7th judge), to we Pastafarians. We are, after all, th quietest, most civilized, of all the religions on this planet. Though we do not kneel, cover our heads or cross ourselves, we are, nonetheless a progressive group of mugwumps looking to a peaceful place to pracice our faith.