You are a ******* idiot. The first amendment does not permit people to act contrary to the law on the basis of their religion. Only laws that specifically target religious expression are unconstitutional. How can one be so stupid as to not understand the difference between thought and action?
Actually stupid, the 1st amendment prohibits the MAKING of laws that violate the expression of religion by people.
You totalitarians piss on the 1st and the rest of the BOR.
No, it does not. Never has. It prohibits laws that are targeted specifically at religious expression. The law used to be that any law that substantially burdened religious exercise had to be justified by a compelling governmental interests.
Sherbert v. Verner | LII / Legal Information Institute That notorious liberal, Scalia, wrote the opinion that changed that rule. In Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith (494 U.S. 872) Scalia and the Court held "We have never held that an individual's religious beliefs [p879] excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting conduct that the State is free to regulate. On the contrary, the record of more than a century of our free exercise jurisprudence contradicts that proposition.
As described succinctly by Justice Frankfurter in
Minersville School Dist. Bd. of Educ. v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586, 594-595 (1940):
Conscientious scruples have not, in the course of the long struggle for religious toleration, relieved the individual from obedience to a general law not aimed at the promotion or restriction of religious beliefs. The mere possession of religious convictions which contradict the relevant concerns of a political society does not relieve the citizen from the discharge of political responsibilities.
(Footnote omitted.) We first had occasion to assert that principle in
Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1879), where we rejected the claim that criminal laws against polygamy could not be constitutionally applied to those whose religion commanded the practice. "Laws," we said,
are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices. . . . Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary because of his religious belief? To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.
Id. at 166-167.
Subsequent decisions have consistently held that the right of free exercise does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a
valid and neutral law of general applicability on the ground that the law proscribes (or prescribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes).
United States v. Lee, 455 U.S. 252, 263, n. 3 (1982)" This education is brought to you free of charge.
"
It's a puzzlement.
