Supreme court allows church use of hallucinogenic tea

The use of hallucinogenics by Native Americans has persisted for centuries, with peyote being the most common drug by my understanding. This drug seems to be new, at least in terms of use in America. Maybe O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal will become the newest fastest growing religion.



[edit on 2006/2/21 by GradyPhilpott]

Peyote has been used for thousands of years in Native American culture in North America. The Supreme Court did the right thing. They were doing this in the US before we even came along.



Source

hmm.. I want to understand God too, can I have some tea?

Now if the Supreme Court can allow this Church to have halluginogenic tea, shouldn't they allow the Rastafarians to smoke marijuana or at least make a tea from it? It's part of their religion and how they claim to understand God too. This could be very interesting for the legal battle of legalization of marijuana.

good find Grady

Yes, they should. And it will be real interesting if it comes up.

Not that I'm against the ruling; but does this mean that everyone and anyone gets a free pass, if they bend the rules on religious grounds?

What if my religions bars me from renting my boarding house to certain people. There are actually a lot of religious groups with such rules, but the power turns a blind eye. . . .

The Supreme Court uses a variety of tests such as the historical use of the drug among the group, the importance in its religious ceremonies, etc. to come up with an ultimately arbitrary decision on whether it's part of your religion or, on the other hand, if your religion is valid at all.

Yes, if you think about it,

They are deciding which religious beliefs are legitimate.


Heady stuff.


.

Rastafarians aside... (I was just kind of kidding about that because I think marijuana should be legal)

It's one thing to not interfere in a religious practice that was taking place here hundreds of years before we even showed up and imposed our laws on the natives.

It's quite another to say, "Hey! I have a religion that says it's ok to discriminate so you have to let me do it."

Like djohnsto77 said, there's criteria to be met regarding what is a religion and how ingrained the practice is. I don't agree that the decision is arbitrary, though. History is clear about the Native Americans use of peyote for religious purposes. They don't judge whether or not your religion is valid, just whether or not your practices are for religious purposes or not. If they are, they stay out of it.

They are not deciding which religious beliefs are legitimate. They are staying out of the religion, which is as it should be. They're not saying it's legal, they're saying it's not for them to say.

From the original link:

Religions and religious beliefs don't really become more valid with the passage of time. If I decided to create a new religion that included the regular use of crack cocaine, why would that religion be any less valid than religions that have exisisted for milenia, as long as it is a sincere religion and I'm not just saying that to get around anti-drug laws?

Perhaps that's true, but if you want to start a religion that centers on smoking crack cocaine, you'll have to go somewhere else to do it because it's illegal here.

It's not the passage of time I was basing my argument on, it's the fact that they were doing it before we came here and imposed our society on them.

You're arguing from a very unusual position, BH. The drug in question here is dimethyltryptamine (DMT), which is illegal, just like crack.

Will hi Grady! I thought you had me on Ignore.



I'm arguing from the same position as the US Supreme Court. You don't see the difference in respecting a religion's practices that were in place before we came here made laws against them - and starting up a new one with what we have determined to be an illegal drug?

Sorry, I did think it was peyote, since you talked about it in your first post, but now I see it's another plant extract.



Wikipedia

I'm not really arguing this case, at all. I just wanted clarify your position.

[edit on 2006/2/21 by GradyPhilpott]

actually, the native americans are kind of in a unique position legally anyways, and I think this plays a part in this. If you were offered a place in this church and accepted it, but well, wasn't at least part native american, well, you'd still be breaking the law. Native americans can and do havest payote legally, it's a criminal offense for the rest of us to do this.

the government had no right trying to interfer with their religious practices to begin with. those rights are guarenteed by treaties and by laws.

I don't think this should be a religious issue but a personal issue. In that it should be someone's personal choice to use this if they want. It isn't the government's place to prevent someone from doing something to themself.