So I was helping my girlfriend with a paper on Religion last night and we were discussing Wicca and the 1986 court case came up.  The one that officially recognized Wicca as a religion.  According to the case, a prisoner was charging that he was being discriminated against because he was (is) Wiccan.  He was not allowed to (as a prisoner) obtain the items needed to practice his religion.  Now I wonder if this would fly today.  I mean think about it, imagine a Catholic was told he couldn’t have a bible in jail, or a Muslim could not have the Qur’an or a floor covering for prayer, or one of the other major religions being denied what is required to practice actively.  All hell would break loose.  I don’t mean to say if some guy says he needs a knife or a gun to actively practice his religion in jail that we should give it to him.  But put him in a padded room and let him go at it.  I mean he’ll get tired out eventually.  But in all seriousness, I don’t want to think of the consequences.  I was speaking to one of my friends about it and they made an off color comment to the effect of, if we took away a muslims right to practice in jail that they’d blow something else up. 

Now I’d like to think that 99.99% of them are more civilized then that, and I’m sure they are.  I also think there are more important things to blow things up over then somebody in jail not being able to actively practive their religion.  It is my feeling that if you are in jail, you have committed a crime.  In my book that means you no longer deserve all the rights afforded to you.  The freedoms we have are conditional to the effect of as long as you support this nation, its laws, and don’t fight against it, you deserve all your freedoms.  Once you commit a crime against this country, its citizens, or even simply its “occupants”, you loose some of you rights and freedoms.  As part of your punishment for committing a crime that results in jail time, you loose all but the right to live, unless your crime has resulted in your forfeiture of that too.

I know what some people will say, how can rights be conditional.  If they are conditional, they aren’t rights anymore.  Well I feel that your rights are protected by US law, until you break that law.  Depending on the severity of your crime, you loose only a few rights or you loose a lot more of them.  Going to jail is in itself a loss of rights.  (I think I can say safely we all support jail time for criminals.)  I just feel that once you violate the unspoken trust all people in this country have between eachother by breaking one of its laws and hurting somebody, you don’t deserve to have full freedoms.

That’s just my 2 cents.  Hopefully I didn’t piss too many people off with this one.