Pagans Excluded From First Amendment?
Patrick McCollum has been fighting for years to overturn the State of California’s “five faiths policy”, which limits the hiring of paid chaplains to Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and Native American adherents. The lawsuit began with Patrick and a number of pagan inmates claiming that it was unconstitutional for the state to deny the pagan inmates their religious rights, their religious materials, and their religious services through a pagan chaplain.
The defense is arguing that “traditional” faiths are first tier faiths and that those faiths were meant to have equal rights and protections under the United States Constitution, but that all of the other faiths (including pagans) (more…)