\nAccording to many Rastas, the illegality of cannabis in many nations is evidence that persecution of Rastafari is a reality. They are not surprised that it is illegal, seeing it as a powerful substance that opens people’s minds to the truth \u2014 something the Babylon system, they reason, clearly does not want. They contrast their herb to alcohol and other drugs, which they feel destroy the mind. ((see Wikipedia link above for more))<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Would we defend Rastafari’s and their use of marijuana as a matter of religious freedom? I think not.<\/p>\n
What then is religious freedom? We would insist on it for ourselves and our own beliefs, wouldn’t we?<\/p>\n
When we recall the hardships endured by Baptists in early America, we realize those hardships were perpetrated largely by Christian people who came to America in search of religious freedom. Some of them, to be sure, were more interested in freedom for their<\/em> religion than in freedom of<\/em> religion. Since the Baptists were outside their religion, they weren’t eligible to enjoy freedom.<\/p>\nLet’s consider polygamy and marijuana use together. These involve actions taken by an individual that are external and impinge on the freedom or rights of others. The use of marijuana is rightly deemed illegal in our country because it isn’t merely an individual’s choice and the effects on himself and his own body alone, but rather it is a substance that alters the mind, impairs judgement and can thus cause devastating consequences on others.<\/p>\n
Polygamy could be said to be the choice of consenting adults, but its consequences reach far beyond the emotional\/spiritual impact on a set of consenting adults (not to mention the allegations that often the consent is one way or that some parties involved are not adults when the consent is alleged to have occurred). The fact is that polygamy affects the children of polygamy who are unable to choose the ‘lifestyle’ for themselves. There are attendant problems as some of these young people grow up and the boys in particular are said to be shut out of the selection process.<\/p>\n
Our state has an interest in protecting the innocent against the actions<\/em> of others, especially actions that hold a significant potential of harm to others.<\/p>\nThere are some who would restrict Christian freedom using this kind of reasoning. They would suggest that the teaching of Christian dogma to children in Christian homes is a similarly deleterious activity, just like polygamy. Terms like ‘psychic abuse’ might be used.<\/p>\n
However, it seems difficult to quantify such abuse. Who could raise their own children at all if somehow the belief systems of parents could not be transmitted to one’s own children? Would our state advocate abandoning all moral training? Would our state have any such overwhelming community interest?<\/p>\n
On the other hand, if physical abuse (objectively quantifiable harm) were to be occurring in any<\/em> home, Christian or not, our community would have a duty to protect the victims and restrict the perpetrators by whatever means deemed judicially necessary.<\/p>\nIt seems to me that religious freedom, then, is the freedom to believe, to associate, to speak, but it is not a freedom to do<\/em> everything someone might deem to be required by his religion. Just as my liberty to swing my arm through space ends when your nose occupies the space I am planning to swing my arm, so too religious freedom ends when ‘religious acts’ can objectively be seen to cause harm to other individuals. On these grounds, then, we must side with the state in this case and support the prosecution, conviction, and judicial punishment of our news-making polygamists.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Canada today, the biggest news story of the day is the arrest of two Mormons for polygamy. These men are the heads of rival factions among a Mormon sect in Bountiful, BC. There have been numerous stories about these men, their wives, their children, their feud, and on and on over the last few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[6,66,10],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-hF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1095"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1095\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}