I have to admit, this is a story that I haven’t been paying too close attention to. It would have been easy for me to pick it up, hammer out a quick “hey look, religious nutballs!” article and then dust off my hands and consider it a done deal.
I’m not going to go over it all, you can read up on the latest developments here. Basic story, big giant polygamist sect, children getting married and impregnated and otherwise treated terribly, government steps in and takes the kids, big hullabaloo.
Again, normally I’d either fire out an easy article or, in this case, just ignore it entirely, but then another article came down the pike: the Vatican has completely barred women from being Catholic priests. This one even showed up on Boston legal, with the lawyer arguing that as the church has made progressive decisions in the past, why not this?
This is a great time to sit down, stroke our long white beards in thought, and take a nice long consideration about our 1st amendment. For reference, here it is:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
Okay, there we go. The first part doesn’t really apply, but the second is certainly interesting. Objectively speaking, there should be absolutely no legal standing for anyone who wants to either force the Catholic church to let women be priests or to stop Mormons from marrying barely-teenaged girls. That’s exercise of religion, ne?
Sure, you say, but that doesn’t count when you’re talking about breaking the law. Close but not quite. It’s happened in the past that religious groups have been allowed to flagrantly break the law because it’s part of their religion. Look at the New Mexico church that won a SCOTUS decision allowing them to drink tea with a hallucinogenic ingredient, technically a Schedule I substance. Or the Amish kids who aren’t subject to laws requiring children to stay in school until they’re 16.
Clearly we have precedent for such things, but there is something inherently in all of us that says these things aren’t right. Not to mention we all do have a piece of our heads that tells us that just because the religion believes it’s right doesn’t mean they should be allowed to do it. Strictly speaking there are all kinds of illegal things commanded by whatever God someone may believe in, can we stop them from acting upon it?
The major religions all have some rather harsh words for what to do to unbelievers, or to those who don’t follow the faith’s commands. You can pick up any book you want and start reading through it, for any religion from Christianity to Wicca, and find a whole slew of things that are against the law or otherwise would not work in 2008 America.
We’re going to have to make a decision in the United States. Either everyone’s subject to the same laws or they aren’t. Either we let everyone have “free exercise” of religion and deal with the consequences or we’re all on the same playing field and you can have whatever faith you want, you just have to be within the same bounds as everyone else.
Being a liberal, I want people to be free to live their lives however they want. Frankly I think if the church says no women priests, deal with it. That’s their rules and if they decide to change ’em, then fine, but don’t force ’em. However, if they’re going to do so, then I subsequently say no to tax-exempt status. Fix the economy and ensure that the church can do their own thing. Win-win!
The bottom line is, we can’t keep dancing between “free exercise” and “the law”.
Okay, back to normal politics.