Here are a few stories about religion making their way into the news feeds today:
St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Atheist sexual predator sues for access to “Satanic Bible”
Image via WikipediaWell, while I am no position to judge the prisoner's sincerity, I am also in no position to say the reading materials of a legitimate organized religion should be disallowed to a prisoner who requests them.
There is child sacrifice in the Christian Bible too, so I'm not certain that disqualifies the Satanic version. If it really is shown that allowing prisoners to have this book somehow causes more violence in prison, then the argument could be revisited.
But our freedoms aren't based on whether we agree with how other people choose to exercise them. If we start using that as the criterion for how to rule on these kinds of cases, who is to say that our own preferences won't eventually be deemed inappropriate or offensive?
