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prntrkmt
Cannabis Sacrament Minister
Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Posts: 515
Location: southern California
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 Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 2:06 am Post subject: |
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| Ferre wrote: |
| The Funny thing is that they require NON-Christians to explain their believe system to American court in order to be judged on 'sincerity' by, no doubt, a Christian judge. |
It very much bothers me that ALL federal judges are officially paid with money that includes the officially established religious oath of office "In God We Trust", even though the Constitution specifically forbids rleigious oaths of office.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this was NOT a violation because supposedly ALL humans worship god.
Yes, it is a THOUGHT CRIME in America to be an atheist!
Yes, it is a THOUGHT CRIME in America to worship Goddess.
Only three religions (and their derivatives) worship a monotheistic male god: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. All three of these religions specifically state that their respective gods require that all Witches be tortured and murdered for worshiping a female Goddess (in the Torah, Bible, and Quran, respectively).
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prntrkmt
Cannabis Sacrament Minister
Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Posts: 515
Location: southern California
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| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 6:30 am Post subject: |
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| dan wrote: |
| = You notice I don’t use the title Reverend. We of the Church of Cognizance have a reason for this. We are not Christian ministers. We profess a Neo-Zoroastrian faith, wherein preachers are looked down on as robbing not only the wealth of the followers but the intellect as well. This is taught in the Avesta, which is considered by scholars to be more ancient than the Vedas. |
The law uses the word "minister", but specifically states that there is no intent to limit the law solely to those who are Protestant Christians. The law states that it uses the word "minister" to indicate ALL religions' variations of the person who directly deals with the membership and directly minister to their needs.
Any person who meets this legal definition can receive tax-free housing from their church. neither the church nor the minister has to report the housing (including reasonable utilities) to the IRS. This housing allowance does NOT count towards taxable income. The housing allowance can legally be used to pay for the mortgage (plus utilities) of the house that belongs to the minister (or similar function in any other religion).
There have been a huge number of lawsuits over who exactly does enough to meet the legal definition of a "minister". The IRS has a long standing policy of being very liberal with the largest mainstream Christian religions, while being very discriminatory against the "ministers" of non-Christian religions.
Check with a lawyer who knows religious tax law before doing this, because the IRS is very picky and comes down with very high penalties if they don't believe you qualify. Again, check with a lawyer in this field FIRST.
At the extreme, if a state allows a "corporation sole", then the highest ranking leadership of a religion can have all of their income turned over to the corporation of the religious office (the corporation sole) and effectively ALL of the income of the religious leader are tax exempt (with some limits to prevent "excessive" luxury, whatever "excessive" means to the IRS or the courts).
Before everyone runs off an creates a corporation sole, realize that the IRS pretty much audits EVERY corporation sole and attempts to impsoe huge fines if they don't believe you (again with liberal policy towards the largest mainstream Christian religions and heavy discrimination against non-Christian religions). So, again, check with a lawyer before running off and doing this.
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prntrkmt
Cannabis Sacrament Minister
Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Posts: 515
Location: southern California
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| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 7:34 am Post subject: |
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| RevErikM wrote: |
| A lot of the focus on the posts here concerning the COC case was denial of their religious freedoms as outlined by the Founding Fathers of the United States of America in our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. While many here believe that only (or not even) a cursory examination of their beliefs and practices should have been enough to prove their rights were violated, more steps had to be taken because of the legislation and beauracracy involved within cases such as this. There have been posts quoting other cases where the judges had found that it wasn't their place to judge the merits or flaws of a religion in comparison with other religions, and no judgement should be placed upon the overall merit of the belief system no matter how fantastic (seemingly from fantasy) the beliefs are, the judge does have to determine to the best of his/her ability whether they are truly dealing with a religion, be it new, old, an offshoot of a popular religion, an unorganized(containing no formal hierarchy) or if what they are dealing with is an elaborate construct in order to render one "immune" to prosecution under certain types of legislation. (Legislation that I do not give my consent for, neither do I consider it to be within the proscribed powers allotted to government by the chains of the Constitution in this case.) |
The most recent Supreme Court decision strongly supported the idea that a religion need not be "reasonable" and forbid courts from evaluating either the "reasonableness" or the "validity" of any religion. That decision even protected non-theistic beliefs, such as Buddhism, Taoism, or Confucionism and implied protection for aethist philosophies.
The most recent 9th Appeals Court decision (more recent than the Supreme Court decision, only binding on the western states) strongly imposed a "reasonableness" test and also strongly imposed a series of tests clearly and unambigiously Christian or Christian-like in nature. Buddhism, Taoism, and other non-theistic religions were unambigiously ruled NOT to be valid religions. Any religion without a long standing continuous existence was also clearly ruled as not being a valid religion (again, strongly contradicting the Supreme Court). Single issue religions were specifically forbidden any first amendment protection.
But Witchcraft and Kemetic religions (somewhate ironically) will actually meet the standards of the 9th Appeals Court.
Those who aren't afraid of the "W" word (Witchcraft) are afforded a great deal of protection, because there is a clear and unambigious religious use of plants for religious purposes that long predates our current species. It is unclear exactly how long cannabis has been used by Witchcraft, although there is some evidence that it may occur shortly after the emergence of our own species. At a minimum, at least some Witches have been using cannabis for at least 12,000 years.
The Kemetic religions (ancient Egyptian) have been using cannabis for at least 5,000 years, and possibly 12,000 years.
And nobody can deny the "completeness" of the Kemetic religion, which is the source of almost all the major religious ideas of the world (notable exceptions include the lack of the concept of sin).
Even though Christianity has always spawned new small splinter groups (every currently existing version of Christianity started with a small or even one person), the 9th District court bizarrely ruled against the validity of new splinter groups in Christianity. Also note that many of the current mainstream Christian churches started as single issue religions (such as an emphasis on baptism or an emphasis on "the method" -- Baptist and Methodist, respectively).
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prntrkmt
Cannabis Sacrament Minister
Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Posts: 515
Location: southern California
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| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 7:45 am Post subject: |
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OOOps -- previous comments should be 10th, not 9th. Sorry about that.
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prntrkmt
Cannabis Sacrament Minister
Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Posts: 515
Location: southern California
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| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 7:53 am Post subject: |
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| Ferre wrote: |
I hear ya.
What troubles me though, is that the American court, in general, has the opinion that people who use Cannabis for religious/spiritual reasons are "attempting to avoid procecution".
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"Attempting to avoid prosecution" -- well, of course. The official Roman Catholic punishment for possession of Witchcraft paraphenalia (such as cannabis buds or rose petals) is 30 days of torture, including mutilation of sexual genitals, followed by drawing (cutting open the stomach and pulling out the intestines and other internal organs) and quartering (tied to four hoorses and ripped into four parts). After death, the cannabis possessor's body is burned at the stake.
So, it isn't surprising that cannabis users want to avoid prosecution. Who really wants torture and death at the hands of Christian officials?
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David
Bard
Joined: 28 Sep 2003
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| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 7:57 am Post subject: |
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prntrkmt,
Thank you for posting, great info. |
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prntrkmt
Cannabis Sacrament Minister
Joined: 14 Mar 2006
Posts: 515
Location: southern California
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| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 8:17 am Post subject: |
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| Don Quixote wrote: |
hmmm.a tricky one.
if Dan and Mary were dealing Cannabis for profit it does destroy the argument that they are sincere.
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The Christian religion supposedly teaches that the "money lenders" ain't allowed in the temple (although selling dispensations and giving one third of the money and land stolen from Witches sure seem to be at least schizophrenic, if not hypocritcal).
But this is NOT the standard of other world religions.
In almost all tribal religions, the shaman or witch or witch doctor is handsomely paid for herbal preparations.
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Nachtschattenreich
Cannabis Sacrament Minister
Joined: 09 Jan 2007
Posts: 509
Location: Franconia, Germany, Europe, Old World
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| Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2007 6:00 pm Post subject: |
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prntrkmt,
| Quote: |
| The official Roman Catholic punishment for possession of Witchcraft paraphenalia (such as cannabis buds or rose petals) is... |
can you please link a source for this? Somehow my priest must have missed the memo that he should be a butcher.  |
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