Opinions - Why can't I exploit freedom of religon...

[Mr. Giraffe]

Dude, just because it worked in your school doesn't mean that a policeman or a judge is going to buy it.

Also clothes = not drugs.

Incidentally, what's ICP when it's at home?

[purplehaze]

Theres a organization in hawaii called the THC ministry. Swim has read many reports of people sliding by with pot charges by using the THC ministry. Swim doesnt have all the info to post but a quick google search could reveal alot hes sure.

http://www.thc-ministry.org/

[purplehaze]

sorry for double post this will be swims last post until he wakes up again so expect no reply for atleast 8 hrs (hopefully).

Swim has read alot into this after posting, including there forums etc. It seems there testominals havnt been kept up to date as the last one is from 2006. But just a little on how this is supposed to work. The guy roger christie is his name, running the organization THC - minisitry stands for the hawaii cannabis ministry, became ordained as a reverend. The way it is supposed to work is he is a reverend who marries people and provides holy sacrements at the wedding, and presumably the sacrements are cannabis. He further says that because he marries people and provides the sacrements it is then legal for him to possess and grow cannabis. He also says the way it works is he will ordain you as a reverend and send you a THC card to show your religion involves holy sacrement (cannabis) and it should be reffered to as holy sacrement. So by being a reverend who marries people and the sacrement being cannabis anyone who gets ordained as a minister can grow and posses cannabis because they need it for the ceromony. All in all swim is skeptical and would like some other users to investigate this, also read the .PDF swim feels like it might have some word play involved and would like someone else to read over it to prove its validity. Heres an example of what swim is talking about he says he got ordained when he saw an ad in rolling stone magazine and sent off for it and payed 5$ and thought that will be a good 5$ worth of entertainment; as a novelty. Thats how he words it. Also he says the word minister means "to comfort" and the word ordainment means we're putting into a documentation a recognition of your personal,private,agreement with creation, spirit, nature, god, god-dess- whatever you want to call it. you never have to define it; it's a lifelong journey.


Link to the pdf. http://www.thc-ministry.org/religious-freedoms/

left side of page.

[Mr. Giraffe]

Sadly, it doesn't work.

http://cannabisnews.com/news/23/thread23370.shtml



Hawaii Supreme Court Rules Against Religious UsePosted by CN Staff on October 01, 2007 at 06:00:06 PT
By The Associated Press
Source: Associated Press

Honolulu -- The Hawaii Supreme Court has ruled against a Big Island man who claimed he had to smoke marijuana to practice his religion in what he called the Hawaii Cannabis Ministry.
The court decided that Joseph Sunderland's freedom of religion didn't give him the right to smoke marijuana, but it didn't rule on whether Hawaii's strong privacy protections would have shielded him.

"The law prohibiting possession of marijuana ... applies to everyone," similar to traffic laws, said prosecuting attorney Janet Garcia. "Otherwise, you could have someone who says, 'My religious belief is that I shouldn't have to stop at a stop sign."'
One justice, however, argued in a dissenting opinion that privacy rights guaranteed by the Hawaii Constitution should allow people to smoke marijuana in their homes.
Justice Steven Levinson wrote in the court's split decision Sept. 21 that the framers of Hawaii's constitution intended to limit criminal punishment to cases where people are harmed.
"The issue is whether ... a fundamental right to privacy ... constrains the state from criminalizing mere possession of marijuana for personal use. My thesis is that it does," Levinson wrote in his dissent.
The case started when a Big Island police officer spotted a six-inch pipe on Sunderland's kitchen table in 2003 while the officer was looking for a missing child.
Sunderland told the officer the pipe was his, and he had a right to use it to exercise his religious beliefs. In fact, he said he had smoked marijuana from the pipe that morning.
He showed the officer a card indicating his membership in a religious organization called the "Cannabis Ministry," and he told the officer he had been practicing his religion since he was 16 years old.
Sunderland was charged with promoting a detrimental drug in the third degree for possession of the pipe and the marijuana residue inside.
"I believe that God put the holy herb onto this earth to help mankind to better understand him," Sunderland testified at trial.
He was found guilty and ordered to pay $175 in fines and fees.
His attorney, public defender Deborah Kim, said she will ask the Hawaii Supreme Court to reconsider the privacy issue. "The court has ducked the question of whether the right to privacy prevents the police from enforcing marijuana laws when someone is using marijuana in their home for religious purposes," Kim said. "The question is still very much open." Source: Associated Press (Wire)
Published: Monday, October 01, 2007
Copyright: 2007 Associated Press

[no-go]

The responses in this thread seem to be generated by a misunderstanding of "freedom of religion", which is clarified in the language of the U.S. Constitution Bill of Rights and in our court cases.

The primary concern of Amendment 1 is establishment of a religion, that is, officially compelling citizens to adopt a particular religious view by means of federal legislation (including atheism).

First, it is clear that the prohibition of possession or use of certain substances cannot infringe on the individual's right to profess his religious views.

Second, drug use is not exclusive to religion. When its ban has a universal target, that marks the primary effect of the law; accordingly, it is an accidental, not intended, effect when it complicates ritual religious practice. Thus it does not qualify the legislation as having a religious interest, and religious freedom is not directly infringed.

The U.S. has a very consistent application of "freedom of religion" understood in the context of the first amendment, and the rare exceptions made for substance use are justified for several reasons other than religion.

While swim uses some drugs to enhance religious intellectual edification (not religious "experience"), and believes this a fine thing to do, swim does not think it is a human right any government is inherently bound to respect.

[FuBai]

Originally Posted by no-go

While swim uses some drugs to enhance religious intellectual edification (not religious "experience"), and believes this a fine thing to do, swim does not think it is a human right any government is inherently bound to respect.

Of course here we come to a basic difference in the understanding of Human Rights in general. Whilst a policy may be consistently and logically applied this is no indication of the validity of the policy; and, in regard of Human Rights the concept needs a greater depth of evaluation. This is not to say that I do not agree with the first part of your post - in the specifics of the application of the First Amendment - but I would differ with you on this idea of Human Rights. I would argue entirely the opposite - that the prohibition of an action, act or possession that is, by its purpose, not specifically designed for or necessitative of harm to other parties is a violation of the fundamental human right to self-determination. No Government which is not in a clear and present emergency situation should have the right to create a crime to infringe upon individual liberty unless it can make a good case to show that the crime necessitates or highly predicates (in the majority of incidences) harm to parties other than the individual who performs the crime. Ronald Regan himself put it thusly: "Government exists to protect us from each other, where Government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves."

[radiometer]

Originally Posted by Mr. Giraffe

Sadly, it doesn't work..."The law prohibiting possession of marijuana ... applies to everyone," similar to traffic laws, said prosecuting attorney Janet Garcia. "Otherwise, you could have someone who says, 'My religious belief is that I shouldn't have to stop at a stop sign."'

This was exactly my point, along with several other members.

[CrakkBakk]

Originally Posted by Creeping Death

I'm wondering what can qualify as a "religion" in the eyes of a government. For example if the cops catch me with drugs, and i say that it's my religion, what would your religion have to "contain" in order for it to hold a quarter in court?

I know that it wouldn't work, but i'm qurious about it. In case i wanna start my own religion someday.

Didn't read the rest of the posts, but this would NEVER hold up in court.

The supreme court bases the majority of its decesions on previous court cases (w/ some exceptions such as seperations).

Some mormon was arrested for a crime that doesn't hurt anyone: bigamy. He said it was his 1st amendment right to practice a religion. The court statement was that the 1st amendment protected people only for believing in a religion, not necesarily acting on it. Wikipedia bigamy for more information.

The supreme court would simply pull that case up and you would be thrown in jail.

[Bikelbees]

There are of course legal guidelines and Alfa's idea regarding sacramental use of mushrooms is useful. The key case in the UK was R v Taylor (http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2001/2263.html); here a Rastafarian argued for such liberty to use cannabis. He failed IMO through his defence team allowing the court to infer that such laws were commonplace and integral to the UK's obligations under the UN Conventions. These conventions are not binding on UK law at all, so why they keep citing them as if they were handed down from God is a mystery.

Of course these laws requiring established worship practices etc miss the point but its all we have to work with. Why is shamanism not recognised, why not have the right to a even single religious experience involving drugs? Our brains are programmed to receive these chemicals at the blood-brain barrier level, criminalising these molecules is nothing short of curtailing our biological destiny to unify our existing drug receptors of which there are a great deal, its like they have reduced what it means to be human, not only culturally and politically, but also biologically. The right to use your brain in any way would seem to me to be a fundamental tenet of religious freedom; however for the time being it could be worth testing the ground along the lines or organised religions in the same way as others have succeeded with peyote.

[Mr. Giraffe]

A fine and logical argument, Bickelbees, the only flaw in which is the outrageous sums of money required to take the sorts of cases which would need to be taken to open the possibility of such a right being recognised. And even then, it's hard to imagine that the highest courts will do anything but kick the matter back to national governments, allowing them the freedom to regulate for 'public order and morality'. After all, the judges are going to share the "drugs are bad" mindset and may fail to consider the nuance of the argument.

[Bikelbees]

Anyone charged with an offence or entitled to appeal are usually subject to legal aid funding. This is usually dependent upon counsel's advice, can make a free challenge. As for the judiciary, well, they are duty bound to consider certain arguments fully, as long as the arguments are properly drafted. I'm looking for a suitable team although its tough getting the required perception shift. I'm posting that Owen Davies QC who represented Taylor will NOT be participating, nor will Rudi Forston who also in a clients words (Casey Hardison) "limp and ineffectual". "Top" civil liberty solicitors firms Birnberg Pierce, Bhatt Murphy, Public Interest Lawyers and Leeds based Harrison Bundey have all demonstrated total disinterest in this cause as well - I would steer clear if you want a firm to fight new ground.