Discussion: Mistrial For Border Volunteer Charged With Felonies For Aiding Migrants

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The good news is that a majority of people on the jury agree with us. Thus the mistrial.

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Or the Old Testament, either.

“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” Hebrews 13:2.

ETA: @mattinpa, @tena You give water to people in the desert, no questions asked. It’s a matter of common sense. You put water out for birds and stray animals as a matter of basic human decency. How twisted does a person have to be to stretch that out into a crime? I know in far west Texas/southern New Mexico similar programs have been in place for years. Basic human decency.

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They are. But the Talmud says charity is the equal of all the other good deeds combined. It’s absolutely central. It’s borne out in Corinthians—“if I have not charity,” and in the above-cited Matthew 25. Every tradition I know would honor this man for saving lives of suffering people trying to save themselves and their families. So thank you, whatever gods may be, for sending him home to his own. :disappointed_relieved:

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I agree - every tradition does honor that.

It’s basic being human.

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several other No More Deaths volunteers were charged last year with lesser offenses ranging from “entering a national wildlife refuge without a permit” to “abandonment of property.”

Meanwhile, I’m going to go book an off-road trip for “Don’t Tread on Me” members on 4-wheelers through endangered habitat located in a National Park! MAGA!!

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I was just about to post this.

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Basic human decency is on holiday.

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And the Historical Jesus of the Book of Matthew (not be confused with White Jesus from the books of Robertson)

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You have blanket authorization to use Religion as cover for anything EXCEPT fulfilling the true tenets of that religion. I pray Alito, Thomas,and the rest of the SCOTUS Reich wing are destroyed utterly and completely.

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“And now all of the sudden it’s all changed. My own view of this is that this is a change in policy by the government, and that it’s totally political. This is racist. Why would they do this?”

Two words: Stephen. Miller.

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I wonder if the Volunteer argued that he had a “sincere religious belief”? That seems to be the ticket these days and his claim would be more honest than both.

BTW, can a atheist claim a sincere belief? I may have to become a registered member of The Church of Satan or the FSM in self-defense.

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That seems to be a silly question. Atheists have beliefs, and some of them are sincere.

I suspect that what you’re really trying to ask is whether the courts would afford the same protections to someone who claims a sincerely-held belief of non-religious origin. And that question seems to me to hit ideological bedrock almost immediately, which is to say that partisans would be strongly inclined to decide the question by reference to the larger political and cultural divide in this country:

  • Conservative judges would be inclined to reject sincere but non-religious beliefs because only Christianity religion is explicitly protected by the Constitution, whereas freedom of conscience merely emerges from “settled precedent” that’s actually very easy to overturn when it was established by ancient liberals.
  • Liberal judges would be inclined to afford sincere non-religious beliefs the same importance as religious ones, out of a recognition that our freedom of conscience is the common thread that underlies several of our explicit freedoms, and also that failing to do so results in special rights that belong only to members of specific sects (which is incompatible with equal justice under the law).

The only reason I could imagine it playing out differently would be if the conservative judge took a longer view of things: the conservative judge might realize that such obvious favoritism w/r/t Bible-thumpers could be used against the Conservative cultural movement, either as an avenue to attack these rulings, or through secular folk weaponizing the special status of “sincerely held religious beliefs” in their opposition to Conservative culture by forming facade religions like FSM.

The only alternative I can imagine, oddly, is the one that seems most just to me: decide that religious belief is not a universal trump card that can be used to ignore the laws, recognize that there are some duties that every American must perform even if they object to them, and that the true challenge for the Court is to figure out a rule for identifying which obligations supersede freedom of conscience and which ones don’t.