I can do that in Virginia and I won't be arrested as long as my religious belief in human sacrifice is sincerely held?

The state is West Virginia. We separated from Virginia at the beginning of the Civil War, and became the 35th state on June 20, 1863.


(And, yes, the Republicans took over the state Senate and House of Delegates in 2014. The state is currently in an uproar because they have passed a right-to-work law and an end to prevailing wage. The Democratic governor will be vetoing these bills, and I suspect, the religious freedom law as well. Don't get your panties in a bunch!)

Didn't mean to attribute over the top lunacy to the wrong state.

The usual requirement for overriding Constitutionally enumerated right is that it serve a compelling government interest.

This raises the bar, but doesn't abolish it.

So take murder. If you could dispose of murder without burdening religion, then there'd be no need to burden free expression of religion. Human sacrifice, however, is murder, so you'd have to find a way of abolishing human sacrifice without burdening free expression of religion. There being no way of doing this, the answer to your question would be no.

It would be up for the courts to determine if the level of equality enjoyed by the GLBT community is the same as that generally enjoyed by the non-named communities without burdening freedom of religion. The difference might be that if you can get all the same services without punishing somebody for a morality crime that doesn't violate their moral code then that might not rise to the bar. As it is, it's often seen to be a government interest to require such state-sponsored and state-legislated morality. (Yes, I'm using what amounts to both '60s liberalese with '80s right-wingese. The '60s "you can't legislate morality" met the '80s "you should legislate morality" in the '00s "it's government's job to legislate morality." Nobody's figured out how to square that particular geometric object.)

My God requires at least one beating human heart to be placed on his altar each day. Under this law could I kidnap and sacrifice a steady stream of young men & women? Sure sounds like it.

Because that's what Jesus did--overturning the tables of the money changers.

This was, in fact, that one most violent action taken by Jesus and his disciples. Going in to trash what, at that time, was big money.

So I expect, next time I'm in West Virginia, to let BankAmerica know just exactly what Jesus would do!

money lenders.

Way over the posted limit, for sure!

Those days are long gone.

My new church

ridin' on the dashboard of my car,

I can go a hundred miles an hour, 'long as I've got the almighty power
glued up there by my pair of fuzzy dice.

Those laws wouldn't be affected, and I can't imagine West Virginia having too many laws that go beyond Title VII.

I might have to move to West Virginia so it'd be legal to plaster all the cars in the parking lot of the West Virginia state house with Spaghetti Alfredo. The Flying Spaghetti told me to do this quite some time ago but since it's currently considered an act of vandalism and therefore a crime, I have resisted.

Now I will be able to worship without fear of prosecution.

So they can move to Iran. Sounds like they'd be a good fit.

when people of a religion that is not Christian do something based on a deeply held belief.