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I quoted the text already a few times; it is broad enough to include free practice. Do you disagree?
by AdrianB1 6y ago
I quoted the text already a few times; it is broad enough to include free practice. Do you disagree?
- gamblor956 6y agoYes, I disagree. Free Exercise has never meant "do whatever you want" because that would have rendered all other laws moot. The Reynolds case has a good discussion of what was going on in the heads of the BOR convention. In a nutshell, religion was viewed as "beliefs" not "actions." (There is a letter from Jefferson on this point.) So the free exercise of religion was understood to mean the freedom to believe whatever you wanted to believe, not whatever you wanted to do. Modern First Amendment law is actually broader than the BOR...religious practice is considered subject to First Amendment protections, but like speech, is subject to extremely limited restrictions.
- AdrianB1 6y agoSo what is the meaning of "free exercise"? What was meant 230 years ago? In plain English, that text was not written by aliens in a rare Klingonian dialect and "interpreted" by Ferengi looking for some profit$$$. Free exercise for almost any religion includes going to the places or worship, without restrictions. At the time the article was written, there was no video conferencing so it was definitely considering going to the church as part of exercising the religion.
- gamblor956 6y agoFree exercise for almost any religion includes going to the places or worship, without restrictions. At the time the article was written, there was no video conferencing so it was definitely considering going to the church as part of exercising the religion. That's not part of the free exercise clause, that's part of the establishment clause. Yes, it's confusing. That's why lawyers get paid the big bucks: to spend days going through the laws, cases, and volumes of written literature on complex topics like this.