Laws against the practices of scientology and others

If, as the law supports, a minor child is not capable/responsible/aware enough to go to jail for crimes, know when they want to have sex, or get drunk, or smoke, etc., how is it that they can be exposed to religion and expected to make the right choices? Should it not be illegal for a child to be approached by a recruiter for Scientology (or any other religion)? If there were a law against it, a religious group could lose their church status for violations, no? Have to pay taxes, yes? The same law would give authorities and individuals greater leverage against cults (as most religions are) who use isolation to brainwash, why is RICO the only law that is usable in most cases?

It would not be an infringement on the freedom of religion as any parent would continue to have the right to teach their child what they believe. And recent years have shown the courts open to overriding the parents religion to protect children, as with medical treatment. So, would it be crazy to push for a law that makes it as illegal to bring a minor to a church or for a church to approach a minor as it would to take them to a bar? The bar would lose their license and so could the church. It seems like a law that would enforce itself, because despite any angry parents, no church will risk their status as a non profit. Bottom line is that If minors are not capable of deciding what is right for their minds or their bodies, how is it they can make a decision as critical as the path to god/enlightenment/whatever?

If Scientology sees a benefit to approaching minors (which I am sure they invested millions figuring out), you had better believe there is a benefit to keeping them away from them, and trying to talk sense to the parents isnt going to do anything at all.

So... Any lawyers out there feeling especially litigious today?

ftfy

Aww, so cranky! It's just a question!

fify

These may be of interest to you

oo
where'd u get that shit from??

good to know @ least some ppl care abt it!

Thats great! but this is at best 4 people in one town 4 or 5 years ago. And i did not say that no parent ever reports this, but i dare say that those who do not report it outnumber those who do. Do you think they only approached 4 kids in one town in Buffalo, NY in October of 2006? I'll grant you that there are probably thousands more of these complaints out there, but still not NEARLY enough. Why do people have such a problem accepting that not everyone who has a child will make a good parent??? How many children die because their parents have religious objections to medical care, how many kids get abused every day so they don't go to hell? I'm not even shocked anymore by what some people can do to their kids.

Everyone wants to talk about freedom, everyone wants to talk about government, everyone wants to talk about Scientology, but people start squirming when it goes from Scientology to religion, and no one wants to talk about religion and its affect on freedom and government.

Maybe i'm wrong, but if Scientology starts faltering/losing in its fight against Anon for the right to do what it wants, and there is any possibility to use the precedent that sets against the catholic church, you had better believe they will jump right into the fight.

Interesting idea. Not sure if it could get anywhere in court. There could well be a case against enlisting minors to work crazy hours in the sea org.

Wow.... so its pretty much ok for these people to do what ever then. Our cop calls and complaints may not win this fight but I have great confidence in anonymous. We will win! How many ppl are awear now because of us! @baddakota: you keep doing what we believe in and we shall prevail! And just a note....no there should be a license to be able to have children! (Jk) but not really!

Your proposal has serious constitutional problems. To begin with, speech prohibitions based on content (in this context, per your proposal, religious) are forbidden by the first amendment, as evidenced by the inherent difficulty in drafting a law that would distinguish between "recruiting" and "talking." If I approach you on the street and tell you how Scientology saved my life, is that recruiting? Is it recruiting when I hand you a pamphlet? Is it when I administer the OCA? And putting aside the question of who would be charged with enforcing this, but how could it possibly be enforced? See the problem?

If you define recruiting by whether the target subsequently becomes a member of the group, you're still left with the problem of defining membership. And unlike, say, on-campus military recruiting, becoming a member of a religious organization doesn't usually result in a contractual obligation like it does with military, and so it would be difficult to determine whether the target has been legally "recruited." () And the law already protects minors who have signed contracts by permitting them to disavow the contract before majority, even if they wish to disavow after reaching majority (within a reasonable timeframe) . And even presuming the aforementioned problems weren't problems, prohibiting religious groups from delivering certain types of speech violates their free exercise rights. And if the law was tailored to target only certain religious groups, you'd have an establishment clause problem as well.

Lets finish "dismantling the church of scientology in its present form" first, 'k?
Then we'll have one of our representatives get back to you.

Sounds like a great idea!

No doubt its a complex problem, although what you outline speaks more towards interactions between adults, which is not what i was referring to. I didn't mention it in my last post, but It occurred to me while reading the incident reports attached above that they do not sound much different than that of a pedophile, be casual, get their trust, lure them to where you want them. If it were illegal to approach a minor to peddle religious materials, very few would mistake a 10 year old for an adult. And if they could lose their church status, they would take care to ask for id if they weren't sure.

And I did not refer too much to public speeches, I was speaking more to children in houses of worship, so hand them a pamphlet is one thing, luring a child into a scientology building to watch a video is another. Take scientology out of the picture for one second. You lure a kid into a building and you go to prison, so how does adding religion make that okay?

It really shouldn't ... look at the cathlic priests. Who in the hell would want them trying to take their son into a secluded room? (no joke) what's the problem whith them approching children with adults! There is a reason that they don't.... because everyone knows they are full of shit. So they go for the nieve children.

just like pedophiles!

Is baddakota really AO? This sounds like some of the stupid shit he would say.

What you're talking about is drafting a law that prohibits certain type of speech, which is defined very broadly under the first amendment, and which makes no categorical distinction between adults speaking to adults or adults speaking to children. "Speech" includes far more than "public speeches." Before proposing laws, you might want to read the instruction manual. And carelessly conflating religious recruiting with pedophilia doesn't help your point in the least.

omg everyone is so hostile, lol, did i hit a sensitive spot?

oh and, um, please bear in mind that i was not NEARLY the first to pair religion and pedophilia, i actually think catholic priests might have written that instruction manual. I didn't throw that out there carelessly. and if a few million parents had been more careful with their children around their churches, well, there wouldnt be so many victims of sexual abuse by priests for starters.

Call me stupid, call me whatever, boo me down, get offended, complain away, good luck to you all trying to fight a religious group without offending anyone or tackling hard issues

You struck a nerve, all right.

Its called NYPA.
When stimulated, the NYPA provokes the brain's Hate center, and disables most cognition and speech processing.
Its an evolutionary adaptation for basement dwellers with ADHD who would otherwise be distracted by shiny things.

baddakota:
if you haven't given up yet, there's a thread where your commentary might actually be helpful.
http://forums.whyweprotest.net/thre...-pr0n-law-can-we-do-something-about-it.68470/

Just that whole "free speech" thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5FdzHuICS4

I personally think parents should not have any option over the education of their children other then what schools to go to.

Has anyone here actually read what i wrote? of all the things i asked, somehow free speech is what we all got stuck on? Not bringing a child into a church is a freedom of religion issue, not freedom of speech, and im not sure if freedom of speech is relevant when your talking about a 2 year old, 5 year old, 10 year old, etc.

Here is the question i actually asked:

If, as the law believes, a minor child is not capable/responsible/aware enough to go to jail for crimes, know when they want to have sex, or get drunk, or smoke, etc., how is it that they can be exposed to religion and expected to make the right choices?

And here is the question you also actually asked:

So yeah, I got caught up in that question, because it was somewhat alarming that anyone would even propose this. As to the former question, in which you suggest that because the state is within its rights to impose age moratoriums upon various public-health risks, it follows that the state should also, then, be within its rights to impose similar age restrictions on religious beliefs. I realize that this isn't precisely what you said, but it is the natural import of your suggestion, regardless of whether you've thought it through.

An argument from Co$

"But children haz moniez too guys!"

Here's an answer:
for the past several thousand years, religion has been valued by our civilization as among the most important and valuable things that exist.
Because of its widely-regarded importance, and because of the amount of human suffering that have occurred when governments tried to impose rules restricting religion, the founders of the United States elevated "Religious Speech" among the most highly protected forms of speech in their country. Interference with religious pursuit has been, historically, treated as infringement of Religious Speech in the US.

The only places where the police or the government are allowed to intervene in religious activity, are where existing laws are violated.

As harmful or dangerous as it may be, for a sneaky religious person to preach their faith and corrupt the minds of young people;
there aren't any laws in this country that prohibit such exposure. The Constitution forbids us from having laws which do. To change this, you'd have to amend the Constitution, or throw out 230 years of Constitutional law and precedent.

Even there, you're running against the long-standing tradition of religious speech being privileged, that's been held by most systems of law in most places in the world since ~3000 or so BCE. Exceptions include: Cuba, USSR, China and North Korea. Also France - which has greatly revised and revisited the concept of religious speech since their revolution in 1789. In Turkey, something similar. As far as I know, they're the only serious democracies that have questioned the place of religious speech. In both places its led to government abuse, though perhaps this is better than the alternative. Most would say that in the Communist states, the harm of restricting religious speech far outweighs the benefit.

I like what baddakota is about ITT.
I think proselytizing to a minor can be treated by the law in a similar fashion as exposing a minor to pornography, using a "I know it when I see it" kind of test.
Granted there is a large gray area, but I think that baddakota's proposal has merit and deserves more consideration. Free speech has limits, and I think that
proselytizing to minors is a reasonable limit since it is manipulative and children are not equipped to see that.

Pornography is not "specially protected" speech.
In fact, it enjoys few protections by the law at all.

Religious proselytizing IS "specially protected" speech,
so the law certainly would not treat the two equally.

Isn't religious proselytizing illegal in a work environment, and considered a form of harassment, whether it is practiced by a boss or a co-worker?

Okay, I know this response will be tl/dr, sorry, but there is a lot going on here...

When the founding fathers drafted the constitution, there were no guarantees of free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, etc, they didnt see it as part of the big picture, which is why it took two years of lobbying (or the time's equivalent) to get added, and why these rights are an "ammendment" instead of IN the constitiution.

Bearing that fact in mind, it is very dangerous to think that because something is in, or ammended to the constitution, means that it cannot be changed, improved, or taken from you if you aren't vigilant. And more importantly, you can have your constitutional freedoms taken without ever changing the constitution, its done with little acts, little changes, little workarounds, anything that isnt recognized and fought against can strip you of your rights or limit or redefine what you can and cannot do according to the changing times.

Take a look, for example, at the second ammendment, the right to bear arms, ratified at the same time as the 1st ammendment. It didnt say "the right for anyone over the age of 18 with no criminal record to bear arms after you fill out lots of forms, and then we may still say no" but that is what it means today, and please note that we as a country have excluded children from being able to carry a gun altogether, so remember to treat children differently when you speak of the rights we hold, because they are not the same for kids. But yes, ammendments can be changed and in the case of prohibition, dumb rules can be added and then thankfully taken out when people realize its a bad idea.

Do not fool yourself about "your rights", they are not untouchable, and in some cases they shouldn't be, depending on your views. And just because something has been around for thousands of years doesn't mean it can't be fixed when its broken. Religion has been around for thousands and thousands of years, yes, and its in the constitution, yes, but guess what? so was slavery, been around longer than most organized religions actually, yet it is no longer a right we hold because it wasn't in keeping with the big picture, and that is a good thing. When an institution abuses its powers, it should have limits put on it to ensure those abuses don't continue, constitution or not. The church used to have the right to start inquisitions and burn witches, they abused their power so now they can't do that anymore, would they like to? you bet. The church would be burning and imprisoning homosexuals all over the world if we let them.

All over the Anon-based sites are the issues of the 1st ammendment, speech, religion, press. But like i said, you can have your constitutional freedoms taken without ever changing the constitution. Nobody read the wall street reports about what companies were doing what, too boring, no one read the FCC reports about what companies were buying communications, too boring, lets face sad facts, most of this country thinks that anything they need to know will be on Oprah. So what happened? Our press was castrated, not by a change to the constitution, but by corp giants buying all the mass media and editing the news and making every journalist and editor think first about readership and neilsen ratings and losing their advertisers before they think about what is right and what needs to be told. A journalist from 30 years ago wouldn't recognize a journalist today as legit, and this sad loss of freedom didnt require ONE LAW TO CHANGE, so stop focusing on the constitution like its unchangeable.

This isn't our only loss either folks. Yes, we do have "free speech" still in the constitution, but how free is it? Homeland and the government have approved listening into our conversations and we can be prosecuted for the free things we say. So did the constitution mean we are free to say anything or did it mean we are free to say anything that doesn't hurt the government and big business and religion? It started as the former, but now its becoming the latter, without ever changing the constitution.

Any good law can be abused and any bad law can change. So yes religion is held dear, but to say religious speech is protected in all manner is not correct, anything having to do with a minor, whether its guns, drugs, porn, solicitation, or anything else is subject to debate when it comes to the constitution and child safety, and i'm not talking about communism, as someone suggested, there are a hundred degrees of government between a democracy and a communist state, so stop oversimplifying.

I dont think it is right for any religion to solicit minors (2yo, 5yo, 10yo, doesnt matter), they are too young to understand and make choices, they can only regurgitate what they are told, that is why religions target them. So do churches have the right to approach a MINOR without parental consent and take them into a building to do anything, including watch a video? They shouldn't. Can a parent take a child to a religious figure and leave them alone with them? They shouldn't (look what happened to so many children left alone with priests).

So setting aside the natural inclination for people to be hyper protective of their faith and constitution, which is totally understandable, how can we protect children from solicitation of the kind that scientology and lots of other religions undertake? Are there laws on the books for other things, like guns, porn, alcohol, smoking, child safety, etc. that can be used to make it illegal to approach an unaccompanied MINOR (or suspected minor) to give them a flyer, take them to a presentation, etc? It seems to me that at the least, parental consent should be required, if it had, then the parents who reported approaches by scientology (shown in the post towards the beginning of the thread) would have had legal recourse to have the person arrested. No child should be left alone with an adult that isn't their guardian, that leaves too much room for abuse.

— Nobody wants their religion curbed, but would you want another religion approaching your child when you weren't around? NO, but that is what is happening.

— Does this mean people can't stand on a soap box and preach on the corner? NO, but it should mean they cant give a child a handout or then take them off somewhere without you.

— Does this mean you cant raise your children in your religion, or take them to your priest/rabbi/etc.? NO, but it should mean that you cant leave them there alone.

Picketing and petitions and open discussion are good things, ddos not so much, but while we are busy with that, big business, government and churches are CHANGING AND WORKING AROUND LAWS, which one do you think is going to make more progress?

Thoughts?

Scientology recruiters or any other religion recruiters approaching children is not the problem. How many underage children actually get recruited into a religion or cult without the consent of the parents?
From what i've read most children become Scientologists, because their parents are already Scientologists.

We cant limit our thinking to what is happening now, we must look ahead as well, they haven't successfully recruit many children YET, but do we want to let it get that far when we see the problem ahead?

There are more realistic issues concerning the preferential treatment of religious organisation over secular organisations by the law, where the mistreatment of members of a religious organisation is excused in the name of "freedom of religion".
See for example the Headley labor case, where human trafficking, coerced abortions and labor law violations got completely dismissed, without even questioning the actual validity of those claims, but merely on the grounds of the "ministerial exemption clause". No secular organisation that treats its members like this would ever get away with it.
So here an organisation gets special privileges before the law simply because it has the purpose to spread an irrational ideology (that's actually the only criteria, which distinguishes a religious non-profit organisation from a secular one).
http://jonathanturley.org/2010/08/12/scientology-wins-major-court-ruling/

Sadly, and i am not defending what happened, the woman in question (not a minor) signed a contract giving the church power over her, the church did not grab someone off the street, force them to work, and have an abortion. Would you EVER sign a contract that agreed to one million years of service??? People don't read what they sign anymore, like it doesn't matter. Everyone says lawyer suck and they are too expensive (which is often true) but when you, as a free thinking adult, waive your rights by signing something you don't understand, you are - unfortunately - asking for it. That is one of the big reasons they did win in court, they agreed to it.

But yes this is a big issue, two of them actually, abusive churches and personal responsibility, but that doesnt replace what i am saying here, it just adds to it, so make it three big issues. The best way to fight is on multiple fronts.

Sigh. So now you're prescribing an unconstitutional speech-restricting law for a problem that doesn't yet exist. (And Anon poster is correct--minors in Scientology became staff via their parents, not off the street).

Your problem, besides not fully understanding how Scientology operates, is not understanding how the law works. You're hardly alone in misapprehending that the law, especially the type you're prescribing, is rarely ever a scalpel but more often than not a blunt hammer; so your bad idea may yet find a more receptive audience.

She was 16 years old, when she signed that contract. Her parents were already Scientologists and she didn't have much other choice, because they expected it from her that she joined the Sea Org.
Furthermore the case was not dismissed, because of the contracts she signed, but only on the basis of the religious ministerial exemption clause. If she had signed the same contracts, but joined a secular organisations instead, then the case wouldn't have been dismissed, because this is human trafficking. It doesn't matter what contracts you sign, legally secular organisations are obliged to pay minimum wage and obey the labor laws.

@Anonymous: I didn't see a reference to age in the article, but in light of that, yes, I am shocked that the court did not rule against the church. It goes to show how way too much can be hidden behind freedom of religion