Well, I found a cite for the exemption of sacramental wine, from the most reliable source possible. Also, this article on peyote I stumbled on to is interesting, but it’s pretty long and I’m still working through it.
Okay, let’s see what I seem to have learned from working on this thread so far:
A religious belief is an idea, and an idea can’t be copyrighted. Ideas are also protected by the first amendment, even when practices are not. So you are free to believe that holding boistrous midnight parties celebrating Xenu’s Greatness will grant you his goodwill, and you are free to express this belief to others, but you still can’t wake up your neighbors.
Recent religious texts, and new translations of old religious texts, can be and are copyrighted.
A church can trademark their name and symbols, provided they meet the same requirements for registrability that any other legal entity’s trademarks would have to meet. You also can’t appropriate trademarked material simply by calling it religion: if that curve-thingy that the Coca-Cola company puts on its products became the Universal Exodian’s holy symbol for the continuity of being or some such, the UE defense of the symbol’s use would have to be based on mundane defences like indistinctiveness and fair use.
Somewhere or other, somebody has written down a list with a title like “Marshal’s Hierarchy of Rights”. That is, there is an established precedence between recognized rights. One precedence is a person’s right not to be the subject of torts or crimes over another person’s right of free excercise of religion. I’d love to know when and how precedent was set for this.
Essentially, the free excercise clause only makes laws interfering with religious practices unconstitutional if they are ‘victimless crimes’.
Does anyone see anything I’m misunderstanding in there?
Okay, new issues:
[QUOTE=Polycarp]
It’s an odd balancing act, which a good constitutional lawyer would have to explain. Simplest way to put it is that if it’s a requirement on the faithful, it’s protected by the free exercise clause. But if it’s a praiseworthy but not mandatory act of faith, it can be regulated by the state.
[/QUOTE]
As Cecil says in his column on the Second Amendment, there’s a great deal of uncertainty in what constitutes ‘regulation’. Shouldn’t there be some clause somewhere regarding undue obstruction?
Also, how does one determine what is required and what is merely praiseworthy? A catholic is required not to sin, but atonement is readily available. I don’t know enough about catholic sins to apply that one in a hypothetical situation, but the suggestion that a religious practice can be prohibited just because the faithful can get away with not doing it sounds loopy- loophole loopy.
[QUOTE=Alan Smithee]
Ideas can not be protected, only the expression of them. You can teach whatever you want about Xenu, as long as you don’t misrepresent yourself as The Church of Scientology, and don’t publish anything that violates their copyright. You can purchase legal copies of Dianetics and distribute them to your followers, but you can’t distribute copies of their teachings about Xenu, because they won’t sell you a copy. You can describe in speech or writing what you remember of their teachings or learn from South Park without claiming that they are your original creation. Being Scientologists, they’ll sue you anyway, and the court will have to decide whether you have essentially copied their work, or merely described their teachings.
[/QUOTE]
Okay, first of all, I’m young enough that I’m not mislead into thinking that just because I bought a copy of a copyrighted work I own that copy. Can I sell those copies of Dianetics, or do I have to give them away?
Secondly, Hubbard claims to have discovered the story of Xenu’s alleged treachery through ‘research’ which seems to have consisted of sitting around thinking about what might be holding humanity back while ingesting mind altering substances. Why can’t I, as Prime Communicator for the Church of Universal Exodus, simply make the same discoveries of past factual events by similar methods (Tetragon’s transmissions are garbled, but with practice one can learn to decipher them) and then objectively report them in the next edition of our own book, Core Enlightenment? After all, you can copyright a newspaper article about a man tripping, but you can’t copyright the fact that he tripped.
In addition to all this, looking at information on patentability suggests that a sufficiently detailed religion, constituting a set of daily life practices, could be construed as a ‘useful process’ for physical and mental improvement, and be therefore patentable. Are there any succesfully patented diet and/or excercise regimens?
