Religious liberty/Right to Free Exercise of religious faith and legalized suicide

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Okay, a question on facebook just prompted a question.  I presume (I do not know for certian) that things like human sacrifice are not currently protected as "free exercise of religion" in the US because it is presumed that no one would ever rationally consent to be sacrified.  Please, if someone knows otherwise correct me if I'm wrong.  

If my prior statement is true and if suicide were to become legal and a protected individual right would it not then follow that the sacrifice of a willing human participant would become a protected religious liberty as well?

[Dr. Pepper]

Is there anything illegal about suicide?  I mean, are people actually charged and convicted if they fail to kill themselves?  Obviously nothing can be done after the fact.  

Or are you talking about what is called 'assisted suicide', something that is (or should be) a part of dignified end of life care? 

Suicide and human sacrifice aren't really the same, btw. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Dr. Pepper,

I believe suicide is illegal in a number of locals.  Whether anyone has been charged with such a crime is a sperate issue.  My question focuses upon why people do not have a right, under the Free Exercise clause of the US Constitution, to choose to be a willing sacrifice as part of a religious ritual.  

If I am correct and it is because the presumption is that no one would rationally and willingly consent to be sacrified then wouldn't making suicide a protected liberty interest allowing people to rationaly choose to die necessarily imply that others could rationally and willingly choose to be sacrified?  Wouldn't that necessarily mean sacrifice of the willing would be legal?

[A wilding]

You don't need to limit this to religion Scott. Apparently it can be a fetish also:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3444333.stm

(  )

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

A Wilding,

But a "Fetish" is not an expressly protected liberty interest in US Constitutionz

[HexMachina]

Because it's much more likely one would be indoctrinated and coerced into "willing" sacrifice in a religion, whereas most suicide is only legal as euthanasia in cases of terminal illness etc. I don't really see the two as particularly similar at all

eta: and I would need to look further into it, but certainly in the recently debated (and rejected) Bill in the UK, there were safeguards to prevent undue influence by others affecting the decision to end one's life

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

HEM,

Very good point.  That said I believe there was a relatively recent discussion on this board where some were arguing that ending your own life should be a fundamental individual liberty.  If that is the case wouldn't that mean choosing to be sacrified would also be a right?  Does the method employed by the person who wants to die impead such a fundamental liberty interest?

[Dr. Pepper]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

 

If I am correct and it is because the presumption is that no one would rationally and willingly consent to be sacrified then wouldn't making suicide a protected liberty interest allowing people to rationaly choose to die necessarily imply that others could rationally and willingly choose to be sacrified?  Wouldn't that necessarily mean sacrifice of the willing would be legal?

lol, I would imagine those involved in religions based on fear, especially christianity, wouldn't want that legal rationale examined too closely, considering it's a religion designed, created, and based almost entirely around human sacrifice.  

I don't know anything about how exactly the right to sacrifice was argued in court, or how legal opinions on it are worded (and frankly, I'd find the jargon difficult to understand anyway), so it's really hard for me to discuss the legalities of it.  However, it does appear to be policing religious practice.  It seems more logical if religious human sacrifice bans had more to do with laws against murder or accessory to murder and whatnot.  It just seems incredibly easy for someone to return to the courts and argue that rational people do sacrifice themselves, after all myth says Jesus did it and is the court really willing to say explicitly that people can't live like Jesus?  

But really, like Helena says, religion so often involves coercion and indoctrination and there is no good argument for allowing a person to end their lives for those reasons.

As far as I know, laws against physician assisted suicide are often rationalized via the homicide thing.  I would guess the law in many has a hard time knowing how to both allow physicians to prescribe life ending drug cocktails while also being clear that it's illegal for doctors to intentionally harm, though clearly some states have managed it without much difficulty.  I think doctors also struggle with incorporating end of life assisted suicide with their ethics and profession oaths (do no harm sort of things).  I think even doctors who truly want their end of life patients to be afforded the ability to have a dignified death would probably also find it very difficult to actually be party to it. 

I'm not sure if I need to get wordy about why exactly suicide isn't the same as sacrifice or euthanasia.  

[Vastet]

I'm not American, but I have to point out that there aren't any mainstream religions (or even any living religions so far as I'm aware) that would be accepting of human sacrifice anyway. It might be ok to die in service of a cause, but not to be sacrificed. So I don't see why religion would have anything to do with the question, beyond the fact that suicide is actually a sin in the biggest religion in the US.

[sologdin]

ZOMG all this thread needs to read church of lukumi babalu aye v. city of hialeah and thereafter maybe merced v. city of euless.  if animal sacrifice is protected, it follows therefore that...help me out, motherfuckers--what follows?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, Vastet said:

I'm not American, but I have to point out that there aren't any mainstream religions (or even any living religions so far as I'm aware) that would be accepting of human sacrifice anyway. It might be ok to die in service of a cause, but not to be sacrificed. So I don't see why religion would have anything to do with the question, beyond the fact that suicide is actually a sin in the biggest religion in the US.

Those types of faiths have died out because their practices are generally illegal.  If there were a way for them to practice their blood magic legally would they re-emerge?

[The Anti-Targ]

Sure, if suicide is made completely legal (i.e. not just euthanasia of the terminally ill), then in theory a legally permissible mechanism for human sacrifice could be created whereby the people carrying out the sacrifice are able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the person willingly and without coercion agreed to be sacrificed.

In the abrogation of a law making suicide illegal it would be possible to put in exclusions, like prohibiting ritualised suicide, but as that would be squarely aimed at religious practices then there would be a constitutional problem to address.

It's probably a good reason to keep suicide illegal generally, but to allow for euthanasia under defined conditions. IMO someone who is physically healthy wanting to commit suicide is suffering from a mental illness and therefore needs help and treatment, not facilitation of their suicidal notions.

1 hour ago, sologdin said:

ZOMG all this thread needs to read church of lukumi babalu aye v. city of hialeah and thereafter maybe merced v. city of euless.  if animal sacrifice is protected, it follows therefore that...help me out, motherfuckers--what follows?

So, what your saying then is that cannibalism and sport hunting of people should also be OK, since, y'know it's totally legal to kill an animal to eat it, and to go out and hunt it just to hang bits of it on your wall as a trophy. Those things might not be recognised as "ritual sacrifice" but the animal is sacrificed to satisfy a human want nonetheless. even eating an animal isn't meeting a human need, since we can easily achieve complete and balanced nutrition without having to kill any animal. So if we are to be consistent wrt human sacrifice being off the table/altar then we must outlaw all ways and reasons for which humans kill animals, and enforce a vegetarian diet, and elimination of leather products, and turn all of our dogs and cats into vegetarians too.

That might take a while to get through Congress. It would be interesting to see which would be harder to get through congress: legalising suicide and thus legalising voluntary human sacrifice, or vegetarianising the whole country and eliminate all industries which require an animal to die (which includes dairy, at least until an efficient way of getting a cow in milk doesn't involve pregnancy, with the calf, esp male calves, being a useless by-product, especially now that you've eliminated meat from the diet).

[sologdin]

ha yes! anthropophagy is absolutely authorized by carnivorism.  the only sensible course is accordingly fruitarianism.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

12 minutes ago, sologdin said:

ha yes! anthropophagy is absolutely authorized by carnivorism.  the only sensible course is accordingly fruitarianism.

Yes... that fruit was murdered.

[sologdin]

but scot--fruitarianism is beautiful!  the plant actually wants you to expropriate its seed-bearing parcels and disseminate same.  aside from the bovine waiter in douglas adams, do any non-fruits offer themselves up in accordance with an ahimsa-style ethics?

[karaddin]

I find this thought exercise bizarre enough I went to your facebook page to try find where it spun off from, and instead god blinded by the vile excrement exuded by one of your apparent friends.  So I'll just have to go off what is here.

I don't see any reason you can't legislate around the issue as others have already said, but I do think that in the coming decades/centuries we are going to need to change how we view decisions around end of life.  I feel like most people can accept that when you are terminally ill it's entirely possible to make a rational decision that you want your life to end, and that the dispute is either religious objection or concerns around abuse that are fair in origin but I feel are taken too far.  As we get better and better at extending lives, we are going to need to have a cultural change at some point which accepts that for some people at some point making a choice to cease living is a reasonable choice that comes up at some point through an extended life span.  I know it's a controversial opinion but I think in rare cases this does already happen, that someones circumstances are sufficiently awful, without being terminally ill, for suicide to be a rational choice rather than an expression of poor mental health, although the vast vast majority of cases are this.  Any case where it's impulsive is never going to fit this, even if it comes on the back of crippling depression etc, and I am certainly not advocating for people doing it by any means, get all the help you can, admit your weakness and that you are struggling and fuck this society that shames that.  Just in those extremely rare cases, or in euthanasia, it should not be illegal.

[DireWolfSpirit]

We already protect the Pentecostals tongue babbling and playing with poisonous snakes, poisonous snakes that occasionally kill the member of the flock playing in the pit. So in my view this is already a protected religious ritual. 

[Stubby]

6 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

We already protect the Pentecostals tongue babbling and playing with poisonous snakes, poisonous snakes that occasionally kill the member of the flock playing in the pit. So in my view this is already a protected religious ritual. 

I don't think natural selection amounts to a "protected religious ritual".

[Jo498]

Assisted Suicide is still illegal almost everywhere (except low countries and Switzerland).

If you kill yourself all on your own there is nobody left to be punished and as opposed to former times suicide attempts are usually not illegal anymore. Ritual murder of a consenting victim is most certainly not what we'd usually understand as assisted suicide.

I do not think there has been a case when someone (like the victim of the Rothenburg cannibal) agreed to be killed (except for those somewhat special situations of terminally ill people in some countries like Switzerland and even those are of course highly contested almost everwhere) and the killer could be excused because of such an agreement. I do not see any reason to drag religious liberty into that because it seems obvious that religious liberty would not count as a mitigating circumstance for any kind of human sacrifice or ritual murder.

(Some kinds of maiming are traditionally excused on that account, e.g. circumcision of infant boys who cannot consent. But I seriously doubt that a new, "made up" religion that introduced e.g. amputating the last link of the little finger of the left hand of infants as a religious commandment would succeed pleading religious liberty.)

[Vastet]

"Those types of faiths have died out because their practices are generally illegal.  If there were a way for them to practice their blood magic legally would they re-emerge."

Name some that only died because the practice was made illegal. Religions don't die simply because part of their belief system becomes illegal, they adapt to the new laws. See mormonism.

" Those things might not be recognised as "ritual sacrifice" but the animal is sacrificed to satisfy a human want nonetheless. even eating an animal isn't meeting a human need, since we can easily achieve complete and balanced nutrition without having to kill any animal."

That's a lie. Humans cannot survive without animal products. See B12.
And trying to balance out a diet without them is far more energy intensive than with them. Our agriculture practices are exceptionally inefficient, but that doesn't mean they must be. A return to agriculture of 80 years ago would be far more effective than turning everyone into vegetarians. Not to mention I'll go to war before I allow ignorant idealists to force their opinions on me, and I'm not alone.

"Assisted Suicide is still illegal almost everywhere (except low countries and Switzerland)."

And Canada.