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Back in April, a federal judge ordered the Genesis II Church to stop selling its "Miracle Mineral Solution" as a cure for COVID-19 a step in the right direction, given that "MMS" is a powerful bleach and can kill you or cause some pretty severe health problems if you take it.

While MMS has been around for a long while, it has experienced a recent surge in popularity first by being promoted by Alan Keyes, well ahead of the pandemic, and subsequently after being promoted as a COVID-19 cure by QAnon proponents, and bolstered by Trump suggesting that ingesting disinfectants might be a good way to cure it. Suffice it to say, sellers of this crap were pretty jazzed about the increase in demand, and severely disappointed when they were cut off.

Thus, last week, the Genesis II Church responded to the injunction by filing a motion to reconsider the temporary restraining order preventing them from selling or promoting MMS as a cure for COVID-19:

They are also very mad at the FDA for declaring their "sacrament" to be a drug, insisting that this, too, is a violation of their First Amendment rights.

(Typos theirs.) Frankly, they're lucky its being called a drug at all, and not just a poison. There are, after all, other instances in which substances taken by people for religious reasons are classified as a drug when taken for non-religious reasons. Like peyote.

In a no-less-insane letter sent directly to Judge Kathleen Williams and prosecutors Matthew Feeley and Ross Goldstein, "Head Bishop" Mark S. Grenon went on and on about how they have to drink and sell bleach because it is what God wants them to do:

We have the 'right to choose' whatever we decide to put in our temples, our bodies, without any government consent needed. You seem to NOT understand us. You need to 'understand' us and respect our God given rights. You US attorneys and judge seem to forget your oath to the US Constitution to which we have reminded you over and over again. The people of the United States and the world are on our side because they understand freedom of choice that God has given us all.

How can we not help people when we see thousands being helped 'outside of the medical industry' with our Church Sacraments that are healing many. Try to tell the following people that they should not have taken our Church Sacraments to cleanse their temples.

This is followed up with several Not Safe For Life pictures of various diseases like gangrene, skin cancer and probably the most severe eczema on earth before and after supposedly being cured by MMS. And then a whole bunch of Bible verses about healing and whatnot.

The thing is though, the website for the Genesis II Church repeatedly and explicitly refers to it being a "non-religious church":

It only became a church in 2010, conveniently, after a bunch of negative publicity following the horrific death of Sylvia Fink in 2009 after she took MMS to stave off malaria. Prior to that it was just Grenon and his sons, Jim Humble (the "creator" of MMS and also a former Scientologist who claims to be an alien sent to earth with the space navy to heal our world), and a bunch of other snake-oil salespeople trying to sell bleach to people as a cure for literally everything in the world.

As a rule, drinking bleach is a poor idea but purveyors of MMS claim that it can cure literally any physical issue on earth: cancer, autism, gangrene, MRSA, Lyme disease, meningitis, spider bites, HIV, various autoimmune diseases, eczema, hepatitis, acne, Parkinson's and malaria.

The malaria is a big one. Proponents of MMS, for years, were very big on going to Uganda and giving people MMS to "cure" their "malaria," and then putting out videos claiming to have achieved incredible results. However, this was done by doing a not-very-accurate test before the MMS which often gave false positives and then more accurate tests after giving people (adults, children and babies) the MMS.

In reality, MMS does not cure any of these things and in fact causes nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, kidney failure, ruptures of internal organs and more fun things like that. Of course, the claim those selling it make is that those side effects are how you know it's working.

The Genesis II Church is not the only "religious" group claiming that it is their First Amendment right to sell people poison as a cure for COVID-19. Convicted felon Jim Bakker is doing the same thing. Historically, however, it has not been the case that churches are allowed to do illegal shit or put people's lives in danger just because it is their religion to do so. Thus Waco and Warren Jeffs and that couple who went to prison for faith-healing their two kids to death.

[CourtListener / CourtListener]

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Church Of Holy Bleach Drinking Invokes First Amendment Right To Sell Bleach To Cure COVID-19 - Wonkette

Contents

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the freedom of speech, religion and the press. It also protects the right to peaceful protest and to petition the government. The amendment was adopted in 1791 along with nine other amendments that make up the Bill of Rights a written document protecting civil liberties under U.S. law. The meaning of the First Amendment has been the subject of continuing interpretation and dispute over the years. Landmark Supreme Court cases have dealt with the right of citizens to protest U.S. involvement in foreign wars, flag burning and the publication of classified government documents.

During the summer of 1787, a group of politicians, including James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, gathered in Philadelphia to draft a new U.S. Constitution.

Antifederalists, led by the first governor of Virginia, Patrick Henry, opposed the ratification of the Constitution. They felt the new constitution gave the federal government too much power at the expense of the states. They further argued that the Constitution lacked protections for peoples individual rights.

The debate over whether to ratify the Constitution in several states hinged on the adoption of a Bill of Rights that would safeguard basic civil rights under the law. Fearing defeat, pro-constitution politicians, called Federalists, promised a concession to the antifederalists a Bill of Rights.

James Madison drafted most of the Bill of Rights. Madison was a Virginia representative who would later become the fourth president of the United States. He created the Bill of Rights during the 1st United States Congress, which met from 1789 to 1791 the first two years that President George Washington was in office.

The Bill of Rights, which was introduced to Congress in 1789 and adopted on December 15, 1791, includes the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

The First Amendment text reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

While the First Amendment protected freedoms of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition, subsequent amendments under the Bill of Rights dealt with the protection of other American values including the Second Amendment right to bear arms and the Sixth Amendment right to a trial by jury.

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech. Freedom of speech gives Americans the right to express themselves without having to worry about government interference. Its the most basic component of freedom of expression.

The U.S. Supreme Court often has struggled to determine what types of speech is protected. Legally, material labeled as obscene has historically been excluded from First Amendment protection, for example, but deciding what qualifies as obscene has been problematic. Speech provoking actions that would harm otherstrue incitement and/or threatsis also not protected, but again determining what words have qualified as true incitement has been decided on a case-by-case basis.

This freedom is similar to freedom of speech, in that it allows people to express themselves through publication.

There are certain limits to freedom of the press. False or defamatory statements called libel arent protected under the First Amendment.

The First Amendment, in guaranteeing freedom of religion, prohibits the government from establishing a state religion and from favoring one religion over any other.

While not explicitly stated, this amendment establishes the long-established separation of church and state.

The First Amendment protects the freedom to peacefully assemble or gather together or associate with a group of people for social, economic, political or religious purposes. It also protects the right to protest the government.

The right to petition can mean signing a petition or even filing a lawsuit against the government.

Here are landmark Supreme Court decisions related to the First Amendment.

Free Speech:

Schenck v. United States, 1919: In this case, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Socialist Party activist Charles Schenck after he distributed fliers urging young men to dodge the draft during World War I.

The Schenck decision helped define limits of freedom of speech, creating the clear and present danger standard, explaining when the government is allowed to limit free speech. In this case, the Supreme Court viewed draft resistance as dangerous to national security.

New York Times Co. v. United States, 1971: This landmark Supreme Court case made it possible for The New York Times and Washington Post newspapers to publish the contents of the Pentagon Papers without risk of government censorship.

The Pentagon Papers were a top-secret Department of Defense study of U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. Published portions of the Pentagon Papers revealed that the presidential administrations of Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson had all misled the public about the degree of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Texas v. Johnson, 1990: Gregory Lee Johnson, a youth communist, burned a flag during the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas to protest the administration of President Ronald Reagan.

The Supreme Court reversed a Texas courts decision that Johnson broke the law by desecrating the flag. This Supreme Court Case invalidated statutes in Texas and 47 other states prohibiting flag-burning.

Freedom of the Press:

New York Times Co. v. United States, 1971: This landmark Supreme Court case made it possible for The New York Times and Washington Post newspapers to publish the contents of the Pentagon Papers without risk of government censorship.

The Pentagon Papers were a top-secret Department of Defense study of U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. Published portions of the Pentagon Papers revealed that the presidential administrations of Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson had all misled the public about the degree of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Freedom of Religion:

Reynolds v. United States (1878): This Supreme Court case upheld a federal law banning polygamy, testing the limits of religious liberty in America. The Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment forbids government from regulating belief but not from actions such as marriage.

Braunfeld v. Brown (1961): The Supreme Court upheld a Pennsylvania law requiring stores to close on Sundays, even though Orthodox Jews argued the law was unfair to them since their religion required them to close their stores on Saturdays as well.

Sherbert v. Verner (1963): The Supreme Court ruled that states could not require a person to abandon their religious beliefs in order to receive benefits. In this case, Adell Sherbert, a Seventh-day Adventist, worked in a textile mill. When her employer switched from a five-day to six-day workweek, she was fired for refusing to work on Saturdays. When she applied for unemployment compensation, a South Carolina court denied her claim.

Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971): This Supreme Court decision struck down a Pennsylvania law allowing the state to reimburse Catholic schools for the salaries of teachers who taught in those schools. This Supreme Court case established the Lemon Test for determining when a state or federal law violates the Establishment Clausethats the part of the First Amendment that prohibits the government from declaring or financially supporting a state religion.

Ten Commandments Cases (2005): In 2005, the Supreme Court came to seemingly contradictory decisions in two cases involving the display of the Ten Commandments on public property. In the first case, Van Orden v. Perry, the Supreme Court ruled that the display of a six-foot Ten Commandments monument at the Texas State Capital was constitutional. In McCreary County v. ACLU, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that two large, framed copies of the Ten Commandments in Kentucky courthouses violated the First Amendment.

Right to Assemble & Right to Petition:

NAACP v. Alabama (1958): When Alabama Circuit Court ordered the NAACP to stop doing business in the state and subpoenaed the NAACP for records including their membership list, the NAACP brought the matter to the Supreme Court. The Court ruled in favor of the NAACP, which Justice John Marshall Harlan II writing: This Court has recognized the vital relationship between freedom to associate and privacy in one's associations.

Edwards v. South Carolina (1962): On March 2, 1961, 187 black students marched from Zion Baptist Church to the South Carolina State House, where they were arrested and convicted of breaching the peace. The Supreme Court ruled in an 8-1 decision to reverse the convictions, arguing that the state infringed on the free speech, free assembly, and freedom to petition of the students.

The Bill of Rights; White House.History of the First Amendment; The University of Tennessee, Knoxville.Schenck v. United States; C-Span.

Read the rest here:
First Amendment - Rights, U.S. Constitution & Freedoms ...

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

Donald Trump is at war with the First Amendment and the free press. The war is on full display nearly every day in his rage-filled press conferences on the COVID-19 pandemic, in which he regularly condemns the "fake news" media and bashes reporters who dare to ask the slightest probative questions about his handling of the ongoing public-health crisis.

Trump's war is also longstanding. And it is waged not only on television and in angry tweets and at campaign rallies (which have been put on hold because of the coronavirus), but also in courtrooms across the country in the form of defamation lawsuits designed to shame, silence and punish his critics.

The latest victim of the president's intimidation-by-litigation strategy is TV station WJFW, an NBC affiliate located in Price County in the rural reaches of northern Wisconsin. On April 13, Trump's principal reelection campaign committeeDonald J. Trump for President, Inc., headquartered in New York Citysued the station in the county's circuit court. The suit alleges that the station had libeled the campaign and harmed the reputation of the president by airing an anti-Trump attack ad produced by Priorities USA Action, a pro-Democratic Super PAC.

Entitled "Exponential Threat," the ad features audio and video clips of Trump downplaying the severity of the virus and disavowing any responsibility for his administration's slow and incompetent response to the virus overlaid against a graph displaying the exponential rise in the number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. since January.

The lawsuit contends that the ad stitched together Trump's statements about the virus in a false, misleading, deceptive and malicious manner to make it appear that he had called the virus a "hoax." According to the complaint, Trump never termed the virus itself a hoax, but instead said at a rally in Charleston, South Carolina, on February 28, that the Democrats were perpetrating a hoax by politicizing his record on the virus.

The lawsuit comes on the heels of other recent threats made by the Trump campaign to take legal action against TV outlets in Florida, Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania for broadcasting the same ad.

The president's campaign committee has also been busy suing print media. In March, the committee sued the Washington Post for defamation allegedly arising from opinion columns written by journalists Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman in June 2019 on the possibility of renewed foreign collusion in the 2020 election. And in February, Trump's 2016 campaign committee sued the New York Times, claiming defamation stemming from an op-ed about Russian collusion written in March 2019 by Max Frankel, who had served as the paper's executive editor from 1986-94.

Sadly, the president's latest round of defamation revenge is part of a pattern that dates back to his formative days as a real-estate developer and publicity-seeking huckster in New York City.

As detailed in a 2016 study published by the Media Law Resource Center, Trump filed his first major libel suit in 1984, when he took the Chicago Tribune and architecture columnist Paul Gapp to court, claiming that he had sustained $500 million in damages as a result of an article Gapp had written, maligning Trump's plans to build a 150-story skyscraper in lower Manhattan. The case was dismissed the following year after the presiding judge determined Gapp's article was a constitutionally protected expression of opinion.

The Media Law Resource Center study also summarizes Trump's failed defamation lawsuit against writer Timothy O'Brien and the Time Warner Book Group, Inc. Now a senior columnist with Bloomberg Opinion, O'Brien asserted in a 2005 bookTrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donaldthat Trump wasn't actually a billionaire. O'Brien's estimate of Trump's net wealth so rankled the future president that he demanded "a whopping $5 billion in damages." Like the lawsuit against Gapp, the case was eventually dismissed.

In addition, the study chronicles Trump's case against comedian Bill Maher. Trump targeted Maher in 2013 for a disparaging joke he told on NBC's Tonight Show, in which he offered to donate $5 million to charity if Trump could prove he was not "the spawn of his mother having sex with an orangutan." After Trump sent a copy of his birth certificate to Maher and the comedian refused to pay up, Trump sued Maher for breach of contract in California. Trump voluntarily withdrew the case eight months later, however. Although his then-spokesperson, Michael Cohen, told Politico that Trump planned to amend and renew the lawsuit, he never did.

Like most of Trump's past defamation forays, the president's latest round of defamation lawsuits seems destined to crash and burn. The cases will falter for one simple reason: they are utterly devoid of legal merit.

Under the Supreme Court's landmark 1964 ruling in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, criticism of public officials is entitled to stringent First Amendment protections. As the great liberal Justice William Brennan wrote for a unanimous court in Sullivan, the Constitution embodies our "profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks"

Public officials, Brennan instructed, must be precluded from recovering damages for allegedly defamatory statements related to official conduct unless they prove that the statements are made with "actual malice"that is, that they are made with the knowledge that they are false or with "reckless disregard" of whether they are true or false.

In subsequent cases, the Supreme Court extended Sullivan's "actual malice" holding to defamation lawsuits initiated by "public figures" and business entities that have obtained public-figure status, such as Trump's political campaign committees.

Sullivan is one of the Supreme Court's most consequential decisions, providing the press with the safeguards needed to keep the public informed and hold the rich and powerful to account. Among the court's current members, only Clarence Thomas has gone on record to suggest that Sullivan be reconsidered.

Why, then, does the president persist? The answer, it appears, is purely political.

At a rally in Fort Worth, Texas, in February 2016, Trump told a throng of cheering red-meat followers, "I think the media is among the most dishonest groups of people I've ever met. They're terrible. If I become president, oh, do they have problems. They're going to have such problems."

And then he added, in a veiled reference to Sullivan:

As of now, the president is losing his war on the First Amendment and the free press. But as Trump's improbable rise to power confirms, the future remains uncertain. If we have learned anything in the Trump era, it is that our constitutional rights can never be taken for granted.

Bill Blum is a retired judge and a lawyer in Los Angeles. He is a lecturer at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication. He writes regularly on law and politics and is the author of three widely acclaimed legal thrillers: Prejudicial Error, The Last Appeal, and The Face of Justice.

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Trump Escalates His Angry Assault On The First Amendment - The National Memo

Representative Chad Christensens platform says that he believes in strict adherence to the U.S. Constitution. There are no exceptions. But his behavior belies this belief when he violates the First Amendment rights of people by blocking them from commenting on his official Facebook page. Crusading for his own rights while denying other peoples is a hallmark of Representative Chad Christensens tenure in our state legislature.

In Randall v. Davison, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled early last year that a public official cannot block an individual from commenting on the officials Facebook page. The court held that blocking would be viewpoint discrimination and a violation of the U.S. Constitutions First Amendment. In a similar decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled later last year in Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump that President Trump could not block an individual from his Twitter account. A quote from that case says it all: While [the public official] is certainly not required to listen, once he opens up the interactive features of his account to the public at large he is not entitled to censor selected users because they express views with which he disagrees.

The Facebook page Chad Christensen for Idaho is described on the page as a political organization, not Rep. Christensens personal page. He regularly uses it to discuss legislative matters. He regularly allows comments by non-constituents, so long as the comments support him and his positions.

One of us, Maggie, was blocked on April 17 from Representative Christensens public Facebook page. I was highly critical of his protest in Boise. I had requested that he remain away from Teton County for 14 days post protest. He was venturing to a higher COVID transmission area and could be exposed. He said that he would come to Teton County if he wanted but in a responsible manner. He would don a mask. I watched the protest online. He was behaving in a foolhardy manner no mask, too close to others. I told him so. I also requested that instead of protesting, he work on supply chain issues for more testing or harvesting issues for farmers. No one wants this shut down. It is a horrendous hardship for all. I explained to Representative Christensen that the shutdown protected healthcare workers and the most vulnerable members of society. I explained that his actions would endanger others. I was blocked. My voice was silenced.

One of us, Carolyn, was blocked twice. The first time was for simply asking how Representative Christensen interpreted some language in the Second Amendment. He did not reply, merely blocked me. After I made some public comments on another page, he unblocked me. The second time was for asking whether mocking people who created a safe space in the Idaho Capitol building comported with the Christian values that Rep. Christensen claims to follow.

Rep. Christensen has said that he blocks people for harassment. Nothing that either of us have said amounts to harassment. Criticism of positions, however harsh, doesnt rise to that level. He also claims to block people for name-calling. We have never called names. We have been called names many times by Rep. Christensen and others on the page, none of whom ever appeared to be blocked.

We expect that we will always differ in opinion from the District 32B representative on any number of issues. As grown-ups, we understand that reasonable minds can differ, and others dont have to agree with us. But a public official has the obligation to listen respectfully to differing views. Holding office requires the ability to listen and govern people who possess varying political ideas. While in office a great many individuals will disagree with you. Representative Christensen has shown repeatedly he is incapable of tolerating criticism.

Further, a public official has the obligation not to violate the First Amendment rights of others. Representative Christensen will champion his own rights and those of his loyalists, but he infringes on the rights of others. This is all accomplished while he touts his love of the Constitution. Individuals who understand and respect the Constitution do not deny others their First Amendment rights. The people of his district deserve better.

Carolyn Dessin and Maggie Shaw, Driggs

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First amendment and Facebook | Opinion - Teton Valley News

A new guidance issued by the Texas Attorney Generals Office says that local and county orders cannot prohibit religious organizations from holding in-person worship services.

While churches were prohibited from holding services on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, Muslims will not be prohibited from gathering for one of their most important holidays, Ramadan, which begins on Friday.

Judges in Dallas and Harris counties prohibited houses of worship from congregating after Gov. Greg Abbotts initial executive order mandated that they hold online services. Most churches have complied, but as Texas continues to post record low coronavirus numbers and record high unemployment, some Christian leaders have said enough is enough.

Houston-based CEO of a Texas medical company, Dr. Steven Hotze, along with four pastors and U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, sued Harris County Judge Linda Hidalgo for an order she issued mandating all non-essential businesses to close, including churches.

After several announcements that Abbott might be reopening the economy, Pastor Steve Riggle, who leads Grace Community Church in the Woodlands, posted a video message on Facebook, urging the governor and state officials to reopen Texas.

We have been patient, even though every projection of the impact of the coronavirus has been grossly wrong, he said. We were told to flatten the curve because there was no cure, even though a very small number actually die from the virus in comparison with the population and other diseases and causes of death we live with on a daily basis.

According to State Department of Health Services (DSHS), as of April 17, .0055 or half of one percent of Texas residents have tested for COVID-19, roughly 169,536 people out of 29 million, and among them .0006 or 6/100 of one percent have tested positive.

Yet in the month of March, more people filed for unemployment in Texas than those who filed during the entire year in 2019.

Riggle argues the governor made an announcement about an announcement and appointed a task force to further delay getting everyone back to work when he could have restored everything with a stroke of his pen.

The number of those hospitalized for COVID-19 in Texas is 1,522, or 5/1000 of one percent; the number of people who have died due to COVID-19 is 428, or 1/1000 of one percent.

Jared R. Woodfill, CEO and attorney at Woodfill Law Firm, which represents the Houston plaintiffs, told The Center Square, It is amazing to me that the Governor will not come out and state clearly and unequivocally that places of worship are open without restrictions.

With respect to these incremental Executive Orders, the Governor continues to chip away at our religious liberties, Woodfill added. This is horrible precedent that can now be used by future governors to justify encroachments on our ability to worship freely.

The Attorney Generals guidance states that essential services include religious services conducted in churches, congregations, and houses of worship, and that if there is conflict between the governors order and a local county orders, the governors order take precedent.

Local governments may not order houses of worship to close, it states.

Houses of worship should conduct as many of their activities as possible remotely, in accordance with guidance from the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Houses of worship should instruct sick employees, volunteers, and guests to stay home, the order states, along with practicing social distancing and good hygiene, implement environmental cleanliness and sanitization practices, and clean and disinfect work areas frequently.

Houses of worship are encouraged to have all attendees 65-years-old and older to stay home and watch services online, or provide a senior service exclusively for attendees 65 and older to attend in person. All attendees with underlying at-risk health conditions should stay home and watch the services online, the order states. Houses of Worship are encouraged to equip ushers and greeters with gloves and masks and consider keeping childcare closed, unless they are able to comply with CDC guidelines for childcare facilities

The guidance came about largely through the work of the Houston-based Texas Pastor Council, which enlisted a team of over 50 of key pastors from around the state to give recommendations and input to Attorney Generals Office.

We prepared a list of suggested guideline points to recommend to churches, received outstanding counsel and revisions from our pastors and presented a final list to AG Paxton that was largely incorporated in the finished guidelines, Rev. Dave Welch, president of the Texas Pastor Council, told The Center Square.

Welch praised state leaders in an email to The Center Square, arguing that they understand the invaluable role churches serve in every community to minister to the spirit, soul and body of people."

Woodfill emphasized in an email to The Center Square that the Texas Constitution guarantees the God-given unalienable right to worship, to peaceably assemble, and to move about freely without unconstitutional restrictions on ones ingress and egress. None of these rights is contingent upon our health status or subject to the limitations Governor Abbott is attempting to impose on these rights. If Governor Abbotts Orders are not declared unconstitutional and void, once this virus passes, the rights we are afforded under the Texas Constitution will be forever damaged.

Woodfill has also sued the governors office over the unconstitutionality of executive orders, the first lawsuit of its kind in the State of Texas.

Continued here:
Attorney General: Houses of Worship protected by First Amendment can worship in person - Washington Examiner