COURTS TRY TO TAKE STAND, STUMBLE DRUNKENLY

Law, like the rafters of a home, is critical to the construction of
our social house.

Laws create a structure in which the weak can move freely, unfettered
by fear of persecution or the blind malice of the predatory. Faulty
laws define periods of social error, periods we look back on with
regret and confusion.

Those who mete out these laws must temper them with reason and
justice.

Failure to make decisions with foresight and caution can only lead to
social disintegration. We trust lawmakers with the same trust we offer
our parents.

We are subject to their whims, and we must be wary of the consequences
of this.

Decision making is not an innocent process.

It is a grave and deliberate business.

Justices of the Supreme Court have understood the seriousness of their
task for generations. They have been selected with the utmost care for
their fairness and wisdom.

Their task is to interpret laws in a manner that will be most
consistent with the United States' most significant and valued
document: our Constitution.

Two weeks ago, a decision startled and perplexed many
observers.

In Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao De Vegetal, the
court ruled that members of a specific Christian Spiritist sect have
the right to use a hallucinogenic tea commonly known as hoasca in
their ceremonies. The tea has no commonly accepted medical nor
nutritional use.

The Court is an institution of unpopular stances, but this statement
is almost perverse.

To confer the privilege of breaking the law on religious individuals
is both in conflict with earlier rulings and inappropriate. Court
history includes numerous incidents in which religious freedom does
not offer an exemption to the law of the land. These include cases
involving polygamy, medical negligence and even the use of illicit
substances (in that case peyote, Reynolds v. United States, 1978.) The
recent ruling of Gonzalez v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao De
Vegetal is in conflict with Reynolds, its direct precedent.

Though the Court's opinion is elastic, its permissiveness toward
breaking the law does not change frequently. To allow religious
individuals special privileges is to deprive non-religious individuals
of those same privileges. The religious freedoms we are guaranteed
include the freedom to have no religion at all, so subscription to any
particular faith should not carry benefits nor status.

With this ruling, the court also defines something many consider
immoral, or at least a vice, as something to be identified with
religion. Religious practice is one of the more sacrosanct
institutions of society.

The open exercise of religion provides a haven for the pious and a
shrine for believers.

Such an environment is invaluable to members of various
faiths.

If religion is defined as a loophole by the court, the declaration of
religion is bound to be abused.

Hate crimes could easily be redefined by racist zealots as ritual
sacrifices. Cruelty to animals, our society's most defenseless
members, can be committed as part of some sort of dietary practice.

The protection of illegal activities as instruments of religion
endangers religious freedom for those with genuine beliefs; the
advantageous will not let this ruling be ignored.

To find religion is a sort of fortune.

Christians speak of gold-paved streets and pearls when describing
their kingdom of heaven, and for many, a blessing that great is
offered to them in their lifetime by their faith.

Many others spend their entire lives seeking something.

We seek faith in an innumerable quantity of places: in spring days
that almost hurt with their vividity, in music and dancing, in falling
in love. As regrettable as it may be for society, some look for the
answer with drugs.

If we are to hold that drug use is a valid method of religious
epiphany and that the achievement of religious faith is an essential
good, there is no reason to criminalize drug use for those who are not
already members of a particular religion.

It cannot be true that the use of psychoactive substances can only
work on people who have a particular belief.

Under that supposition, there would be no desire among non-religious
people to use drugs at all.

Many liberals are wary of the decisions of the new Court, for fear of
its dismissal of rights and for fear of its appeasement of the
dominating conservative culture.

If this is the sort of decision the Court is likely to make, the
liberals' fear is justified.

A decision made without regard to social consequences is no decision
at all, only the flip of a coin on the Court's lunch break.

These justices are not acting as architects. They are merely standing
on site, hammer, wood, and nails in hand, but no blueprint.