The AG of my state has lost his mind

[Ted King]

DeusxMac wrote:
[quote=Ted King]
Isn't that discrimination against the non-religious?

When was it otherwise?
Mostly never, but I think it's still worthwhile to point it out.

I say mostly never because for some time only people with religious beliefs against war could get a conscientious objector status to being drafted into the military. But in early 1970s:

https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/art...ry-service

The Supreme Court was called on to interpret the exemption for conscientious objection and its relation to the First Amendment in Welsh v. United States (1970) and Gillette v. United States (1971).

Section 6(j) of the Military Selective Service Act of 1967 provided, “Nothing contained in this title . . . shall be construed to require any person to be subject to combatant training and service in the armed forces of the United States who, by reason of religious training and belief, is conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form.”

In Welsh, the Court somewhat creatively interpreted and thereby broadened the phrase “by reason of religious training and belief.” According to the Court, “What is necessary . . . for a registrant’s conscientious objection to all war to be ‘religious’ within the meaning of 6(j) is that this opposition to war stem from the registrant’s moral, ethical, or religious beliefs about what is right and wrong and that these beliefs be held with the strength of traditional religious convictions.”

This should have been a model for all claims of exemptions based on a non-religious person's beliefs that are "held with the strength of traditional religious convictions". Of course, that brings us back to the problem of non-subjectively assessing which beliefs are held with the strength of religious convictions. I mean, if all a religious person has to do to get a religious exemption is point to a passage in the Bible (which is probably contradicted by a different passage somewhere else) then the standard should be really low for non-religious people to be given exemptions as well.