Religious Accommodations and Eagle Protection Law:
Judge Michael McConnell, one of the nation's leading scholars of church-state and religious freedom law, has just written a characteristically thoughtful opinion on the subject. Much worth reading if you're interested in American religious accommodation law and how it plays out in practice. Thanks to How Appealing for the pointer.
If there actually are permits available, then the religious practice is being accommodated. No?
Actually, raptors (in general) are over protected. Their populations don't necessarily justify the level of protection they receive. It's almost as if they've become objects of worship for the new age, secular religion of environmentalism.
I would be willing to say, however, that getting rid of environmental laws has recently become itself an object of worship among certain conservatives, and destroying the environment and habitats has become a secular religion for them, don't you agree?
Personally, destroying the environment is my personal religous mission than a religion in and of itself. But that's just me.
In any event, you may have still have won the thread with your first thought.
I don't hear much on that angle. I hear more like the talk-wing yelling or screed against the new hippies. The screed takes that same strident annoying debate-and-conversation-ending tone that a loudmouth "green" will use to get in your face.
Please give me a little more science and a little less screaming. I'm happy to read summaries that have footnotes and keep my mind open about the different ideas out there. I'm no expert, so I have to rely on experts to educate me about the right way and wrong way to fix an issue.
Religion has done enough harm to human advancement; I don't need a new Earth-mother or Hippie-hate flavor to go with the other available flavors of stupidity that are already on the menu.
Can you point to any credible source that the Catholic Church has claimed a religious exemption in the abuse scandals?
Sean,
I noted the Volokh cite, too--and that Eugene was too modest to mention it himself.
Well, there was this:
link
That's asking for (claiming) some kind of exemption for religious reasons as far as reporting abuse goes, no?
Thank you for the link. And I am not trying to hijack the thread. But I was responding specifically to Dilan Esper's contention that someone within the Catholic Church has argued that "child abuse in the name of religion receives legal protection." Your quote goes to what a priest must report after hearing a confession--not any effort by the Catholic Church to somehow argue that "abuse in the name if religion" is protected.
Well, no. Based upon the text that you yourself provided, Cardinal McCarrick doesn't seem to be claiming that the proposed law would be unconstitutional, or otherwise legally invalid; he's simply saying that that Catholic priests would have a religious duty not to comply with it. Refusing to comply with a law is not tantamount to claiming an exemption from it.
However, it's different from claiming that the abuse itself should be protected. I can see how one might see the silence or non-reporting as being complicit in the commission.... though I see it as a bit of a stretch. It's a very old debate about the priest's confidence.
You made my point better than I ever could have.
If not, I don't see how the interest is compelling.
At one, point, a compelling state interest meant one and only one thing: the survival of the state or loss of human life on a mass scale was implicated by a threat on the order of war, epidemic, or natural disaster. A compelling interest justifies shooting people on sight, jailing without trial, violating any fundamental right. At one point, courts took care to limit the situations where constitutional rights could be eroded to only the severest threats based on the most objective of criteria.
Today, a "compelling state interest" seems to mean little more than something the judge happens to think is important.
Hand in hand with the expansion of textual rights to include anything a judge thinks important is the expansion of limitations on textual rights to include anything a judge thinks important. At some point, what the text says ceases to matter at all - what the judge thinks is the only thing that matters. The constitution stops offering any protection that a judge is bound to respect.
Here's a compendium of some of the free exercise clause-based nonexistent privileges claimed by my hometown diocese to try and avoid legal accountability for sex abuse:
http://www.cwnews.com/offtherecord/
offtherecord.cfm?task=singledisplay&recnum=3968
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