John Levine <
[email protected]> wrote:
According to Adam H. Kerman <[email protected]>:
In Australia, in seeking what appears to be the equivalent in American
tax law that they are described as an exempt organization, the >>administrative law judge has made a finding of "That's not funny!"
Australia is not the U.S., and in particular it does not have the First >Amendment or anything like it.
I don't know how separation of church and state works in Australia.
According to Wikipedia, their First Amendment equivalent reads thusly:
Australia has no official religion. Section 116 of the
Constitution of Australia states: "The Commonwealth shall not
make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any
religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of
any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a
qualification for any office or public trust under the
Commonwealth."
That's comparable language to our constitution.
I also don't know exactly what is being protested. Does recognition in
tax law get a church a government subsidy?
Courts in the U.S. have bent over backwards to avoid deciding whether a >church is sincere, which has led to obvious harmless jokes like FSM being >accepted as churches, and rather less harmless ones like Scientology,
also.
Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster isn't a joke religion. Through
satire, it is making a serious point that official recognition that
religion must play a real-world part in official government programs and services causes real-world harm in what's supposed to be a secular
nation. It was founded to counter the attempt to teach intelligent
design, a religious teaching (that had just been made up), in public
schools.
Australia, like most rich countries other than the U.S., has largely >abandoned formal religion. The Methodists, Presybyterians, and >Congregationalists merged in 1977 into the Uniting church to maintain >critical mass. So a judge there has a lot less reason to say that a joke
is a joke and not a church.
I didn't know that; thanks.
I have nothing against FSM, and a lot of sympathy for their point that
the silly things they say aren't any sillier than things that mainstream >churches say, but it's still a joke.
Hey! We have a ruling here that the administrative law judge was not
amused! Instead, the satire (and very bad puns) are offensive toward
mainstream religion!
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