From Deseret News archives:
Drum circle: church?
Activist says participants should be able to smoke
The ordinance grants an exemption for tobacco smoking in American Indian/Alaska Native ceremonies, as well as "First Amendment Activities ... such as smoking or use of materials for bona fide religious purposes." Which is exactly why it applies to the drum circle, says Larsen, because smoking tobacco "enhances the spiritual experience" of the drumming.
That's what he argued in a petition signed by 150 drummers and presented to the Salt Lake City Council last month. "We get all kinds of petitions," says council chairman Van Turner, who adds that the council has no plans to put the matter on the agenda. Now Larsen says maybe he'll take the matter to court.
As a religious practice, peyote has fared better than polygamy. In February 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in an 8-0 opinion that the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act protects a 130-member New Mexico church in its use of a hallucinogenic tea known as hoasca. Chief Justice John G. Roberts noted that using the tea was "a sincere exercise of religion" and that the ruling also included the ceremonial use of peyote. On the other hand, another landmark case ruled that two Oregon Native Americans could be denied unemployment benefits after being fired from their jobs because they had used peyote in a religious ceremony.
That 1990 decision "has undone" the First Amendment, argues Frank K. Flinn, adjunct professor of religious studies at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. Flinn has served as an expert legal witness in dozens of cases involving the legal rights of religious groups "all the oddball cases," as Flinn puts it and over the years he has come up with a definition of religion that he says has been accepted in "quite a few court proceedings, state, federal and international."
Recent comments
i understand and support the spiritual freedom of the drum circle...
suzan | June 11, 2009 at 9:40 a.m.
I have been going to the drum circle for 5 years also..I feel that...
Jaecey | May 30, 2009 at 7:29 p.m.
I have been going to the drum circle for the last 5 years..I have...
Gypsiroz | Sept. 11, 2008 at 8:09 p.m.
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