I abhor the act of demon-worship scheduled to take place in Oklahoma City this coming September 21, unite with my fellow Catholics in prayer and acts of penance to implore a merciful God to avert so pernicious an insult, and join all people of good will in condemning and contemning it as an abomination. The scheduled act of demonolatry nevertheless does raise a real constitutional question: does this event - do such practices - enjoy constitutional protection? On the surface, one might think it is a no-brainer: freedom of religion, right? Well, not so fast: Satanism is a deliberate and quite self-consciously mocking parody of religion. There is no specific and explicit constitutional protection for that. There is, however, a constitutional right to both speech and assembly. So, this and similar events would seem to be covered under those clauses of the 1st amendment. I think it possible to argue that their assembly is for fraudulent purposes, and therefore not protected. That, however, is not self-evident. While I havent time to make the argument fulsomely at present, I can offer the contours of the argument, which are the following: To the extent that the organizers (and/or organizers of similar events) are passing their stunt as an authentic act of religious worship, and/or claiming protection for it under the religion clause(s), and are nevertheless fully aware of the nature of the event they are organizing as well as its history, and inherent purpose, i.e., to insult and discredit true religion, they are engaging either in an attempt to deceive the public by way of false representation, or an attempt to hoodwink the government (i.e. to obtain government protection for their thing as religious exercise, when in fact their thing is by nature irreligious in the technical sense), or both. Neither false advertising nor fraud is protected under any part of our constitution. In any case, there should be enormous pressure from society on both the organizers and on the owners of the venue, as well as vendors and anyone planning on participating in the event. How is crap like this stopped? By people praying without cease, striving to be good neighbors and citizens, and voting with their feet and their wallets. Counselor Gibbons, does this serve as the beginning of a response?
Posted on: Sat, 09 Aug 2014 16:36:10 +0000
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