Last week, Nathan Bruschi '10 wrote a column about a Satanist in a Montana prison ("Right to Religion," Feb. 26). The Satanist, Jason Paul Indreland, is suing Yellowstone County because the prison staff confiscated his Satanic medallion, denied him access to a Satanic Bible and ridiculed him for his religious beliefs. Bruschi argues that Indreland's claims that his freedom of religion was infringed by the guards are unjustified, saying that the permission of such religious freedoms would enable any prisoner to request anything he wanted (like drugs), so long as the prisoner claimed his desired item to be essential to his religious practice.
The problem with Bruschi's argument, however, is that the Supreme Court already answered concerns over questionable religious practices when it ruled against two men who had lost their state-government jobs and unemployment benefits for participating in a peyote ritual (Employment Division of Oregon v. Smith, 1990).
In the case, the Court's opinion stated that an Oregon law against peyote use was not targeting a religious practice in particular, but the use of peyote in general. It was a "neutral law of general applicability."
The problem with the prison staff's behavior in Indreland's case is that they prevented Indreland from accessing Satanic materials not because of an unbiased, "generally applicable" reason, but because they thought his beliefs were stupid. They had no ulterior justification for doing what they did. Oregon, on the other hand, rightfully denied the two peyote-users their unemployment benefits because the state was objecting to the use of illegal hallucinogens in general, not just the practice of one religion in particular. The fact that those hallucinogens were consumed in a religious ceremony was purely incidental.
As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote in his legal classic, "The Common Law," "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience." American justice is not logical, it is practical. It is concerned with what works, with what seems sensible. If the Supreme Court had upheld the right of those two men to use peyote as religious freedom (taking the First Amendment as an absolute), they would have made every man a law unto himself. They didn't do it then, and so we don't have to worry about it now.
So, it seems that much of Bruschi's argument has already been addressed by the Court. Indreland cannot claim whatever he wants as religious practice -- the state just has to allow him his medallions and his Satanic Bible. As long as they're not violating any "neutral laws of general applicability," there is no reason prisoners shouldn't be able to practice whatever religion allows them to make sense of the world -- even if their religion is Satanism.
Clearly, the state should not have to buy Indreland a Satanic Bible, but he should absolutely be allowed to buy his own. As Justice Holmes once wrote, we must "defend the right of a donkey to drool."
However, beyond the rather silly concerns of Satanists, there are real rights to be defended. A prisoner should be allowed to eat kosher or halal food if he feels he must, yet Bruschi dubiously alleges that this would be at great expense to the prison. Cost problems could perhaps be solved with something like the kosher MREs (meals ready to eat) that the Army regularly gives Jewish soldiers in the field, and even if it would cost more to prepare special foods, a convict could be made to cover his own expenses. He who was able to afford the costs of his religion on the outside should still be expected to pay for them in prison. If this is not possible, a prisoner could incur debt, which he would repay over time.
But cost is not what is at issue in the case of Indreland -- the issue is access to religious materials. Now, I'm not saying Satanic beliefs aren't stupid and or creepy -- I think they are. But Jason Indreland has the right to practice his religion. Bruschi tries to demean Indreland's case under false pretenses in order to cast aspersions on the religious rights of all prisoners, and for that reason, I think Indreland must be defended. To do anything less would be to deny other prisoners the right to find order and principle in the hell-hole in which they have landed. It would be an outrage on their dignity, and a denial of their greatest hopes at a moment when they are most in need of them.
