The story in the Washington Post today indicates that a man is challenging the longstanding ban on fortunetellers in MoCo, and the county is saying all fortunetellers are scam artists because the future cannot be told.
Now, I certainly don’t think people can generally predict the future, and I take a dim personal view of fortunetellers. But the county’s reasoning is extremely suspect on First Amendment grounds.
Fraud investigations are conducted against religious bodies from time to time without undue interference in First Amendment freedoms. Barring a practice entirely would constitute this undue interference. Even if the vast majority of fortunetellers are scam artists, this cannot become the justification for banning the practice.
I predict Mr. Nefedro will win, and I hope he does. And I hope he stays out of jail afterward.
This is not a First Ammendment issue because it is commercial speech. He’s perfectly free to say fortune telling is real if he is not charging for it, but the city has a right to regulate businesses. I’d like to see all those people out of business, and they can do the same with homeopaths and other BS practices.
ETA: what do you mean “the vast majority” are scam artists? Do you think there are some real ones out there that somehow can’t use their amazing powers in any way other than opening skanky little shops to tell people’s fortunes? You’d think they could make a fortune on the stock market, at the horse races, or helping the CIA. It would have been nice to have a little warning on 9/11.
If you’re selling a service on which you cannot possibly deliver, that sounds very much like fraud. This is compounded by the high incidence of exploitative behavior involving the taking of large sums of money under false pretenses by fortune tellers in general. The only quandary here is the question of whether there is some psychological benefit to the credulous by having their fortunes told, much like placebo effect in people treated with homeopathy or other form of woo.
Montgomery County has it right in my opinion. Tell fortunes all you want, just don’t expect to make money from your activities. “Free speech” and no people duped out of their savings. Win-win.
Newspapers run astrology columns, and are available for sale within the Montgomery City limits. Maybe the authorities can compel Mr. Nefedro to run a disclaimer saying “For entertainment purposes only” or the like. But forbid altogether?
The exits polls in Florida in 2000 were just as wrong as any fortune-teller, and they weren’t banned.
Christ Almighty, I can’t believe you managed to find a way to shoehorn a partisan political snipe into this thread. You are the king of political non-sequiturs.
I am not saying that Montgomery County cannot ban fraud - nor that they cannot use that justification to aggressively investigate fortunetellers and run all or nearly all of them out of the county. But simply banning commercial fortunetelling as a practice probably runs into issues.
There are numberless religious businesses in this country selling literature and other paraphernalia. Nobody is suggesting that they are in violation of the commercial code because of the nature of these messages. Like it or not, there is a First Amendment aspect to this argument - which is why other laws banning the practice were overturned, per my link.
This is why my analogy was exactly on target. That the polls were right is an article of faith, not subject to disproof. Same for the astrology columns. Same for fortune-telling.
Therefore you have to either allow them all, or ban them all. Add some kind of disclaimer as I mentioned, and anyone who takes them seriously does so at his own risk.
You are never going to be able to convince people who believe in fortune-telling or the polls in 2000, of reality. But adults have the right to delude themselves if they want.
Why not just set up a licensure system as exists for any other professional service? All you need to do is pass the licensure test and then you can hawk your services to your heart’s content.
That way, the minority of valid fortune tellers that Mr. Moto has in mind are not needlessly discriminated against. In fact, they would benefit, since the general public would have greater trust in their profession.
Wrong, but not surprising. A small but solid plurality of Florida voters did leave the polls believing they had voted for Gore. A full count (not “re”) of all ballots cast in the state confirmed that. Exit polls everywhere else, every time, done in the same way, did match the eventual results obtained without partisan intervention.
But belief that the polls were wrong that one time, now that’s an article of faith so strong that there are some who believe it even today, facts be damned, to the point where they can engage in Freudian projection about it.
IOW, thanks but no thanks for your roughly 9,000th “No U” post in GD.
How is fortunetelling a specific religious practice? Nefedro says in the article that fortunetellingis part of his “heritage”, and then the ACLU guy claims it’s religious:
“…the ban becomes a tool to inhibit Nefedro’s First Amendment rights to free expression and to practice his religion, Quereshi said.”
If it’s a “heritage”, I can foresee more trouble in court. Genital mutilation can be part of your “heritage”, but it doesn’t mean American law has to allow it.
I can comprehend, dubious as it is, the Wiccan getting away with “soothsaying” on religious grounds, but our self-described Gypsy is going to have to explain how his “religion” entitles him to pocket loot from morons who think he can see the future.
Sometimes the ACLU is HUA, and this is one of those times.
I’m with Moto on this one. Belief in magic is part of many religious traditions–especially if magic is defined something like “performing symbolic noncommunicative acts in order to effect material change in the world.” Anyone who lights a candle to ask God to protect a loved one is engaging in theurgy. Shall we ban the sale of Veladoras?
Books are written all the time about the coming end times. These are little more than mass fortune-telling. Should their sale be banned?
Where I think we may draw the line is between claims of magic and claims of scientific efficacy. If someone wants to sell sugar pills that contain the spiritual essence of St. HunterSThompson, claiming that these pills will cure your ennui with your middle-class lifestyle, have at it. If they want to claim that the pills contain an herbal extract that’s scientifically proven to improve your sex life, they better have the studies to back it up, or be prepared to face fraud charges.
The first amendment protects religious beliefs, not false claims of scientific beliefs.
