The First Amendment's Implicit Protections are Broad and Far Ranging.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" It comes as no surprise that these powerful words are the first 16 words of the First Amendment to the Constitution. No other pair of clauses approaches their scope in defining the soul of American liberty of religion, conscience, and the pursuit of happiness.

What exactly does the 'free exercise' of religion mean? Does it merely mean that you have the right to believe as you wish?

No. The First Amendment explicitly says free exercise as opposed to mere freedom of belief.

What, then, does free exercise mean? Does it merely mean that you can pray and go to the church of your choice? That is not much of a choice. A fairer interpretation of free exercise would mean that you have the right to live by the guidelines of your religious belief (including no belief at all), so long as you don't invade the rights of others. Free exercise means little if you may not live your faith.

Here is where it gets interesting. Religious beliefs can and often do dictate moral conclusions on all manner off issues. Some religious faiths feel that homosexuality is wrong. Others do not. Some believe that sex outside of marriage is wrong, others do not. The same holds true for doctor-assisted death and even early term abortion.

Are we, as Americans, saying what the Religious Right appears to be saying, that you may freely live within the boundaries of your religion except in sexual or right-to-die matters, where 'their' religious beliefs take over? No, giving arbitrary moral dictates a preferred position in law solely for religious reasons would constitute a forbidden establishment of religion.

Nowhere does the First Amendment exclude certain areas of belief, such as sexual matters, from your guaranteed right to freely exercise your religion. It protects ALL issues, and ALL topics and areas of religious conviction.

Doctor-assisted death is a compelling example of how the recognition of First Amendment rights of conscience falls short even today. If religious or moral convictions are to be given honor and respect anywhere, is there any place more solemn, more sacred, and more personal than your deathbed, where your rights of conscience should be honored? Is not your manner of exiting this world one of your most serious religious and moral concerns of all??

Sadly, the government still sees fit to sleep right alongside us in our deathbeds. This is obscenely wrong.

The closer the government gets to deeply personal and emotional convictions, the more deeply it infringes on First Amendment rights of conscience and their exercise thereof. The 'inalienable right to life' in the Declaration of Independence is often invoked when arguing against abortion. That is well and good, as the unborn are entitled to reasonable legal protection in later pregnancy in my opinion, but the conservatives should finish reading the sentence, up to the 'pursuit of happiness' part:

The pursuit of happiness is indeed a right that is arguably granted by our Creator, for those of you who believe in in a Creator. (Those of you who do not are not morally or spiritually inferior.)

And where law is concerned, the burden of proof should rest not with those who choose to pursue happiness in unconventional ways. The responsibility should rest with those, like the Religious Right, to prove why others should be prevented from pursuing happiness in ways that the powerful disapprove.

What if my religion calls for the death of all infidels?

On the same note, if my religion accepts abortion it does not eliminate the fact that abortion is destroying a viable human life.
If my religion believes that it is fine to kill children after birth, or even perhaps adults, this would be considered murder under our current legal system. Is this in violation of the first amendment? We would like to think that no one in their right mind would argue that the inability to exercise the right to murder is defended in the first amendment. Yet we see that it is not so. Even the killing of half-born children has been defended on the grounds of the free exercise of religion.

The issue of euthanasia is different in that the individual in question has supposedly willed to die. But the question of the individuals will is much harder to confuse when the individual has committed suicide without any outside help. The Dr. Death types have confused the whole matter by introducing an assisted death. Now how do we know whether the assisted death is suicide or murder. If I assist you to your death right now you will probably agree with me that I would be a murder. Now what if, after I have killed you, I hand over a nicely signed will that states that you wished to die. Forgery is not entirely too difficult an art to master and the only witnesses to the event were my cronies and they all swear that you were wanted to die. For the most part, we as a society do not care to jeopardize our lives by opening a legal escape door for murder. Death is simply too serious a matter to be signed on paper. If you feel otherwise, no one can stop you from jumping off a bridge, unplugging your medical devices, or etc, etc… (As you can see the pro-euthanasia minority grows smaller every day.)

The freedom of religion question then revolves more around what is and is not considered interference with the rights of other individuals. It is quite complicated and whole books have been written on the topic but my view is that you can practice your religion fully until it comes to blocking traffic, filling airports with noise, and other inconvenient things like killing people.

What if my religion calls for the death of all infidels?

Yes, the 1st Amendment doesn't give you the right to take away a person's life because of your religious belief. But it does give you the right to oppose people indoctrinating your children with ideas that you consider immoral (homosexuality, premarital sex, abortion, etc.). The liberal left is going to be running more and more into the 1st Amendment as they try to tell everyone else how to behave and believe. You can see this in the Boy Scouts right to exclude openly homosexual scoutmasters, or in the right of a kid to wear a pro-life T-shirt to school, or in the right of a Bible study group to meet at school after school. The liberal left has established itself as an extremely intolerant group that wants to ban by fiat the religious convictions of millions of Americans.

This is another example of the fact that this author really has no clue about the current state of constitutional law on this topic.

The "current state of constitutional law" is a farce and a disgrace, and holds little resemblance to the Constitution itself.

The author is discussing the Constitution as written, not as interpreted and illegitimately amended/ignored by "living" constitutionalists.

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