What If I Said God Told Me To Smoke Crack?

A recent Supreme Court decision said that the government can't stop a small religious group from using a hallucinogenic tea in their rituals. Now the decision itself is no real surprise - they have made this kind of decision before in the case of Native American groups using peyote - but a couple of things about this struck me. First, it was a unanimous decision. So both the civil liberty type justices and the religion type justices could agree on something. Personally, I totally agree with this decision. I think what an adult person decides to put in their body is completely their business and nobody else's. Whether it's for religious reasons or just because you want to, I don't care.

But the thing that stands out to me the most in this decision is the fucking hypocrisy of (surprise surprise) Antonin Scalia. Now, I'm sure there are more justices guilty of this (hello Clarence Thomas), but Scalia is such a major loudmouth prick about everything that I love to point out his stupid nonsense.

Now let's look at this Supreme Court decision vs. other decisions made by them. So, if you are a religion you can use all the drugs you want, apparently. But, just last year the court decided that if a medical doctor wants to prescribe you some marijuana to ease your pain, nausea or whatever reason the doctor has for wanting you to have it, you don't have that right. Of course Scalia was in the camp of letting the government keep pot out of the hands of Grandma. So in his world view, medical reasons for using a primarily recreational drug is bad. Religious reasons, good. So it's OK for the government to come between you and your doctor, but not between you and your god.

This is a man who doesn't believe in the right to privacy or individual freedoms unless they are religious based. He wrote a scathing minority (thankfully) opinion when the court struck down the ridiculous sodomy laws still on the books in many states. Scalia hates gay people so much that he couldn't even consider that maybe the government doesn't have the right to tell consenting adults what they can do with their own bodies. But you can bet that if some religious sect in this country had a ritual that involved raping 12 year olds to make them feel closer to god, Scalia would say "Who are we to stand in the way of someone's religious belief?"

What I really want to do is start a new religion that has as one of their core beliefs that all males must have sex with each other. Just for shits and giggles, we'll demand that we are able to use public places like community centers to perform the sacred rituals. After all, the Boy Scouts are allowed to use public spaces as a religious organization even though they discriminate against gays. Scalia said so. And then of course get the case to the Supreme Court to make Scalia have to decide which is more important to him, hating gay people or loving all things religious.

I would love to hear the inside of his head when trying to decide the case. "Let's see, I really can't stand those fucking fags. But they are a god-fearing religion having butt sex, so who am I to tell them they can't, since it's for religious purposes?"

I'll bet his head would explode.