An offshoot of some questions I had in theReach of Sibelius v. Hobby Lobby thread, which I realised I’d probably be hijacking. Usually, I don’t realise that until it’s much too late!
To quote;
[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
I sense that I’m opening a can of worms here, so feel free to just point me somewhere that could answer my question; why?
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[QUOTE=Bricker]
Because that’s what the Religious Freedom Restoration Act says.
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[QUOTE=Richard Parker]
If you are asking why we protect religious morality but not secular morality, then the answer is a long one involving lots of history. The only real secular justification for it is that it reduces conflict among the religious to accommodate their beliefs and encourages lots of immigrants from different places to come work hard in our new country.
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[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
I’m not sure this is the best place to ask, but I didn’t know where else; is it specifically religious belief that triggers this standard? If I hold a strongly held, sincere secular belief, does that “count”?
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[QUOTE=jtgain]
Secular beliefs aren’t protected by the First Amendment. As I think about it, though, what exactly is a secular belief other than disagreement with a law? Are you suggesting, for example, that because I believe (strongly secularly believe) that Obamacare is a bad law, I should be able to disregard it? Surely not.
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I see no reason to treat a religious belief as necessarily “higher”, or more worthy of protection of the free exercise thereof, than secular ones. Extrapolated legal reasons aside, of course. What aspect is lacking in my secular beliefs and the actions arising from those beliefs that those very same beliefs and actions with a religious basis do have?
OP: If religious exercise and secular exercise were afforded the same latitude, do you suppose that Cliven Bundy could avoid paying the grazing fees he owes to the BLM on the basis of his secular (aka political) beliefs?
The fact that the only way they can reach that determination is by writing their own off-key definitions of atheism and science that have nothing to do with the real definitions.
I don’t know whether he would have been able to avoid those fees on the basis of a religious belief.
If he would be, I see no underlying reason to treat the two situations differently based on the nature of his beliefs. Besides that that’s what the law says.
Right, but does that hold legally? It’s all well and good for me to say I’m not religious, that science doesn’t require faith (except maybe in the sense of “faith in an external reality our senses can, however imperfectly, perceive”). That’s only obvious based on hundreds of years worth of English language use.
But if it might allow me to ignore laws and taxes I don’t like, I’ll be as “religious” as you want me to be.
Which brings me to another question. The ACA was determined to be a tax in the SCOTUS ruling that upheld it. Has there ever been any other tax that was deemed optional according to the religious belief of the taxpayer? Are we opening a can of worms here? Can Christians start stoning adulterers with impunity? Can I stop paying taxes to support wars I disagree with on a fundamental (aka “religious”) level?
As a libertarian, I believe that all people should have the freedom to do as they please, and that the government should only step in when one person’s actions infringe on another person’s rights. Under that system, any person’s exercise of his or her beliefs would be protected. Religious or secular, strongly held or weakly held, sincere or insincere, exercised as a person or as a corporation … none of that would matter.
Obviously the system that the USA and other nations currently have is very different from that. The government does not want to leave us free to make our own decisions in (almost) any area of our lives. Instead it wants to tell us what to do in countless areas: what health care we can buy, what food we can buy, what cars we can buy, how our retirement spending is managed, and thousands of other things. If the government is determined to have control over all of these things, then obviously that means that it can’t simply allow everyone to make their own decisions.
In the USA, religious exercise is protected because the First Amendment of the Constitution says so. Fans of big government can’t ignore that completely, so instead they try to argue that restrictions on business are not a restriction on the religious practice of the owners of businesses. Secular beliefs, on the other hand, have no protection in the Constitution, so fans of big government can ignore them entirely.
While the number of issues that can be seen as impacting one’s sincerely held religious belief is very large indeed, the universe of those issues at least has some bounds around it. For example, we know that Islam has certain rules about some situations, the Amish generally accept certain principles, Christian Scientists would live under certain teachings, and so forth. If an Amish person were to claim that a certain government action violated his sincerely held belief in something, but there was no Amish teaching or rules on that subject, I would have to think that such a claim would have a hard time surviving the “sincerely held religious belief” part of the test.
How can a similar rule be held to apply to secular beliefs? By what means could we determine whether a secular belief is sincere, since there’s no rulebook for secularism?
What I’m getting at is that such a policy would probably boil down to, “If you hold your breath long enough, the government may not be able to touch you depending on the exact behavior at stake.” It’s basically what the Freeman on the Land types actually believe – which is why I brought up the Bundy question.
But that would suggest that it is not a “sincerely held religious belief” test, but a “widespread, sincerely held religious belief test”. That the law would consider a religious person of a smaller group with little to no documented dogma to be necessarily insincere - or at least incapable of demonstrating their sincerity. Given that the basis for this idea lies in the Establishment Clause, designed to protect people from needless interference, it seems to be entirely contrary to the point if minority groups (those most in need of protection) are effectively less able to claim their rights.
However, per one of Bricker’s posts in the other thread, I note that he gives examples of occasions in which people were tested as to the sincerity of their religious beliefs, and those tests did not seem to all involve reference to scripture or common knowledge; observance of declared ritual, frequent worship, and the “speech and manner under oath” all seem ways of detemining sincerity that do not rely on those things.
It’s entirely possible, yes. But that isn’t something that separates the religious from the secular. And a practical inability to follow the law isn’t a good basis for accepting it as is.
Laws can infringe on religious actions, if those laws are written in a way that applies equally to all, serves a legitimate government purpose, and imposes on the religious beliefs in the least injurious way possible.
Thus forbidding stoning serves a legitimate governmental purpose in a way that does not overly burden the religious and applies to everyone.
Forcing corporations to buy birth control does not because even if you stipulate making sure people have all forms of birth control paid for by health insurance is a legitimate government purpose there are plenty of ways for a government to provide it without infringing on the religion of certain employers.
The test for “sincerely held religious beliefs” does not test for sincerity. If anything it tests for popularity and literacy and merely assumes that anything popular/written down is sincere.
In what way wasn’t it? If a corporation is mandated to pay for something, it isn’t a tax and is subject to RFRA, but if an individual is mandated to pay for something, it’s a tax and tough luck? Is there any difference between the two cases, except for the entity subjected to the law?
Corporate taxes exist, so it’s not like they can’t be taxed. So there must be a distinction between requiring someone to pay for something they don’t want and requiring a group of people to pay for something they don’t want.
Are you actually asserting this, or is it just a toss-off remark? Because Bricker has, I believe, alreacy cited several instances where such things were rejected because the beliefs were not held sincerely.
I read his post. It did not convince me that the test actually tests for sincerity. I understand that sincerity is a hard thing to test for and things like church attendance and popularity of a given precept seem like good proxies. And maybe they are until we get around to inventing a mind reader device. Regardless, it’s disingenuous to claim that because a belief is not written down in a catechism or held by some number of a group of people that one person cannot sincerely hold that belief.
I’m also interested in this discussion and have nothing to add other than an anecdote, which is my anti-vax sister. In her state, kids who attend public school must be vaccinated, but there is a religious exemption (there’s no philosophical exemption in her state). Her religion? Catholicism, which, to the best of my knowledge, doesn’t prohibit vaccines in any way.
This is a situation where someone has a deeply held secular belief that the law won’t allow an exemption for, but a little fib on a government form and she’s good to go. As moronic as her viewpoint is, there’s little difference between her deeply held beliefs and those of someone whose religion actually does forbid vaccinations, except that one is protected by the first amendment and the other is not. I guess.
Then could you cite some examples where the courts used popularity as a proxy? Participation in the US military during WWII was as popular a belief as I can recall, and yet people were granted conscientious objector status based on their religious beliefs.