The point isn’t that the Torah or Bibles can’t be copyrighted. The point is that the respective religions aren’t copyrighting their holy books—but scientology is.

As I see it, that’s still not the point. Every Jewish prayer book on my shelf is copyrighted. Do you own anything by ArtScroll? Take a look at the copyright notice, and prepare to be amazed. They bar even the transcibing of their books’ Hebrew text without permission, claiming that it has been corrected.

Consider also that, for centuries, Judaism protected its religious teachings by use of what today would be called “trade secrets,” that is, an unwritten oral law without which its written texts could not be properly understood. (To say nothing of the fact that very few gentiles understood Hebrew. The production of the Septuagint, which allowed gentiles to read the Tanach in the vernacular, was deemed a calamity, and is one of the bases for fasting on the tenth of Tevet.) The oral law was subsequently reduced to writing in the mishnah and gemarra, but there are still Jewish mystical texts whose meaning cannot be understood without assistance.

I maintain that the point, which has nothing to do with copyright per se, is that $cientology attempts aggressively to prevent the dissemination of truthful information regarding its teachings and practices. Copyright is merely one of many tools that the “Church” employs.

Tat, don’t even bother arguing with him. If I hadn’t been away all day, his comment would have been deleted.

2. The right to worship freely extends only as far as individual rights to life and liberty are not abridged. It does not grant the right to kidnap and sacrifice children on bloodstained altars, even if it is part of a religious ceremony, nor does it extend to the right to deny people their freedom of speech, even if such speech might lead to the collapse of the religion. In most states, that is, with the apparent exception of California.

3. California government has been extremely biased toward the liberal side of the political spectrum for quite some time now, as Californeans themselves frequently and proudly assert. Take issue with the assessment if you like, but you aren’t likely to win any friends in California by calling them conservative, or even moderate.

2. The 1st Adm clearly forbids the “abridging the free exercise thereof [of Religion]” (of course, that’s by Congress, not by citizens)

3. How evidence do you have that this law is actually the work of “the left”? I might just as easily say that it’s the Right once again doing what they always do. (of course, I have no evidence of that either).