"...paganism and witchcraft were never intended to receive the protections of the Religion Clauses"

[nebris]

"In one of their first arguments to the court, the defendants said that certain “traditional” faiths are first tier faiths and that those faiths were meant to have equal rights and protections under the United States Constitution, but that all of the other faiths were second tier faiths, and were not meant to have the same equal rights and

Comments

[jenavira]

I've been reading about this case for weeks and I still cannot *fathom* how these people can stand up and say these things and not explode in the sheer wrongness of it all. First tier faiths? Really??

[laudanine]

I'm no formulating an argument here, cuz I don't have the energy to wast in the face of institutionalized stupidity, but...

Isn't there something wrong with the STATE offering any religious anything? To persons in jail, to persons in school, to anyone ever. >.<

[jenavira]

Well, the state isn't offering it, not really: prisoners aren't stripped of their rights to religious participation, and for some denominations religious participation requires a religious official, and for some denominations (like, apparently, Paganism) just not being discriminated against requires a religious official. The state just has to maintain control over who goes into and out of the prison, so they have to be the employer of the religious officials...

Yeah, it's fucked up. But it seems to be the only way to do it.

[laudanine]

Well there are alternative, though I'm not supporting them. But the most obvious seems to be only allowing prisoners what religious aid they can find on their own means, weather that be volunteer visitors or whatever.

I'm not one to claim "prisoners have no rights," a percentage of them (be it big or small) may be innocent, and by no means do all of them deserve to be treated poorly. But when one breaks the social contract, one is accepting the punishments and penalties given out by society. If we establish that one of these is the limitation of freedom and inability to access religious persons, places, and articles... Then that's fair.

BUT HEY. What are the odds they'd find a simple solution?