Church Exorcism Rights Case Planned For US Supreme Court

DeSwiss

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Mon Aug-04-08 01:56 AM
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Church Exorcism Rights Case Planned For US Supreme Court

Church exorcism protected by First Amendment
A woman who claims she was injured during an exorcism performed by a Texas church group is reportedly planning to take her case to the US Supreme Court after state judges ruled the actions of the church were protected by the First Amendment.

The Telegraph
By Catherine Elsworth in Los Angeles
Last Updated: 1:34PM BST 29 Jul 2008

Laura Schubert Pearson, aged 17

Laura Schubert Pearson's lawsuit accusing members of the Pleasant Glade Assembly of God Church of subjecting her to a two-day exorcism ordeal in 1996 that left her so distressed she attempted suicide was dismissed by the Texas Supreme Court last month. The judges overturned a lower court's decision awarding her damages and ruled that because Mrs Schubert Pearson's claims of injury amounted to a religious dispute over church doctrine it would be "unconstitutional" for the court to get involved. Religious freedom campaigners say the case strikes at the heart of the US Constitution's First Amendment, which prohibits government interference in the free exercise of religion, and were the US Supreme Court to rule in Mrs Schubert Pearson's favour, it would signal "the end of church independence and religious freedom" in America.

Mrs Schubert Pearson, 29, claims she was left bruised and traumatised after members of her church group allegedly kept her captive for two days so they could perform an exorcism in which was pinned to the ground and "pummelled". The incident happened after fellow members of the church group became convinced she was possessed by demons. She was 17 at the time. After the alleged ordeal, she dropped out of school and tried to slit her wrists. She told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, a Texas paper, that she was determined to seek justice from her alleged abusers after the Texas Supreme Court threw out her case claiming physical and emotional injury. "You can't use your religious beliefs to get away with harming a child," the mother of two who now lives in Georgia told the paper. "This is so much bigger than myself. This is about not allowing the cover of religion to permit physical abuse in a church, and particularly to a child."

In the Texas Supreme Court ruling, Justice David Medina, writing for the majority, said that were the court to get involved and dictate a church's religious activities it would have "an unconstitutional 'chilling effect'". The decision was opposed by three dissenting justices. Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson said it was "inconsistent with US Supreme Court precedent and extends far beyond the protections our Constitution affords religious conduct. The First Amendment guards religious liberty; it does not sanction intentional abuse in religion's name," he wrote.

Hiram Sasser, director of litigation for Liberty Legal Institute, a non-profit organisation representing litigants in religious freedom cases, said the separation of church and state prevented government interference in religious practices except in extreme examples such as sexual abuse. And while this might mean "certain harms may go unaddressed", he said, "the larger protection of the church and religious freedom is the overriding concern." Mrs Schubert Pearson's claims were largely emotional and "so interwoven with religious practices" there was no way for a court to get involved, he added. "The government can't get involved in overseeing religious practices. The best way to say it is it's not American. "If she did prevail that would erase about 150 years of law in this country from the Supreme Court saying the government does not get involved in the internal affairs and operations of the church. It would effectively be the end of church independence and religious freedom in our country."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/2466354/Church-exorcism-protected-by-First-Amendment.html">MORE

- So if I get what the gist of the Fundie's lawyer's defense here is, that because of 150 years of law by the Supremes saying government can't get involved in determining religious rituals, ipso facto they shouldn't do it now. But now they'll admit that the sexual abuse stuff on kids is a bad thing, and so they'll concede to let us have the right of stopping them from doing that (plus that's mostly only Catholics anyway, http://stopbaptistpredators.org/index.htm">isn't it?)

However, the beating of someone to a pulp in order to drive out the presence of church-verified demons, well now that is a protected ritual. An ancient religious custom, which is therapeutically effective and medically sound, and proven to be an error-proof method of getting rid of unwanted demons. Demons who have metaphysically entered into a person's body, and who are themselves the spawns of Satan -- The Devil Himself. The Being who has a long forked tail, and with horns on his head.

And so therefore, any person or persons receiving sores, abrasions, muscle sprains, bruises and/or contusions, twists or dislocations of joints, tears of cartilage, simple or compound fractures of any skeletal part of the body, and/or are made to suffer mental health impairments resultant from said practices and/or rituals, are incidental and necessary to the free practice of religion as protected under the US Constitution. And thus assumes institutional superiority over any individual's right of protection by the government from physical or mental harm. Unless the ritual or practice has something to do with having sex with children.

That about cover it???

I don't know, what the particular cases are that they're citing over the past 150 years that allows for personal assaults to go unpunished, but its seems to me that if the Supremes said back in 1963 that you http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/2/">can't make a child participate in forced Bible readings and prayer, then it seems a far stretch to say they you can make a child participate as the victim in their own physical assault.
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DeSwiss

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