Soul Quest Church of Mother Earth, Faith Healing, OneTaste, Children of God
Courthouse News Service: Psychedelic church asks panel to let it seek religious exemption for drug use
"An attorney for an Orlando church asked an 11th Circuit panel on Wednesday to overturn a Florida federal judge's dismissal of its challenge to a Drug Enforcement Administration decision prohibiting the church from using psychedelic ayahuasca tea in its religious retreats.
Billing itself as a "spiritual learning and healing center," Soul Quest Church of Mother Earth offers three-day retreats at its facility where participants can imbibe ayahuasca, a tea that contains the hallucinogen dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, in search of a religious awakening. For a $999 donation, Soul Quest Church extends participants the chance to join in on weekend retreat ceremonies to experience the "healing" attributes of the tea.
There's just one problem: federal drug enforcers say the church is not entitled to a religious-based exemption to the Controlled Substances Act, the federal law designating DMT as a Schedule I substance with no currently accepted medical use.
Regardless of the DEA's decision and a wrongful death lawsuit arising from one of its retreats, the ceremonies have continued unabated for the last seven years.
An attorney representing Soul Quest Church and its leader, Christopher Young, told a panel of the Atlanta-based appeals court that a Florida federal judge unfairly dismissed his clients' lawsuit against the DEA last March.
The church sued the agency under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, claiming in legal filings that its refusal to issue a religious exemption for the sacramental use of ayahuasca violates the First Amendment's free exercise clause. Soul Quest Church had previously sued to block the DEA from enforcing the Controlled Substances Act against its use of the tea."
The Spokesman-Review: Shawn Vestal: Another year, another chance to fix Idaho's fatal faith-healing protections
"More than seven years ago, Boise attorney Kirt Naylor signed off on a rallying cry to defend Idaho's children.
In a letter to then-Gov. Butch Otter, Naylor and the rest of the 17 members of the Governor's Task Force on Children at Risk, outlined a child mortality rate in a Canyon County faith-healing community that was 10 times greater than the state average.
The committee, including doctors, judges and citizens from across the state, urged Otter to revise the state's religious exemption to child abuse and neglect laws, which protect parents from civil or criminal repercussions if their children suffer or die as a result of their religious beliefs.
"Our First Amendment right to religious freedom does not include the right to abuse or neglect children," the letter read.
"In 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, 'The right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or child to communicable disease, or the latter to ill health or death. ... Parents may be free to become martyrs themselves. But it does not follow that they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children ... "And yet year after year, more martyred children of the Followers of Christ Church are buried from treatable or preventable causes — from sepsis, pneumonia, diabetes and other conditions that most children survive — and year after year, attempts to stand up for them in the Statehouse come to naught."
"The founder of "sexual wellness" company OneTaste has failed in her bid to sue the BBC for libel over a podcast.
Last March, Nicole Daedone, the co-founder and former CEO of "orgasmic meditation" company OneTaste, applied to be party to an existing libel action against the BBC over a podcast called "The Orgasm Cult" that ran in November and December 2020. She was joined in her application by OneTaste itself and Rachel Cherwitz, an "orgasmic meditation" practitioner.
The original libel action, which continues, was filed by the Institute of OM LLC and OM IP Co – understood to be a rebranded version of OneTaste – in November 2021.
However, the BBC argued that Daedone, Cherwitz and OneTaste's libel claims were time-barred, falling outside the 12-month limitation period.
In a judgement handed down on Thursday, Mr Justice Pepperall, who heard the application, said that he would not permit Daedone and OneTaste to be added as parties to the libel claim because the time limit had expired and would be "prejudicial" to the BBC. However, he said that Cherwitz's libel claim could proceed because she was "not aware of the original claim and did not make a deliberate decision in November 2021 not to join in proceedings."
"While the High Court has decided not to hear my defamation claim, this does not in any way alleviate the BBC's responsibility to correct its errors and ensure the facts are put on record," said Daedone in a statement. "I have said I find bringing defamation proceedings distasteful. Yet despite having in its possession the true facts that unravel the false thread that holds together its podcast, the BBC has been unwilling to do its duty to ensure the public is accurately informed."
Daedone had claimed the BBC's podcast had defamed her by suggesting that she – along with OneTaste and Cherwitz – had "controlled a destructive sex cult which, under the false pretence of being a wellness organisation promoting empowerment for modern women, deliberately manipulated and exploited vulnerable women causing them lifelong trauma for the purpose of making themselves wealthy," according to the judgment."
"A rational look into a very irrational group mentality.
The early 1970's was a turbulent time in the US. Anti-war protesters took to the streets, countless students dropped out and became hippies, and drug use spread among the young. As if to offer the youth a way out of this societal storm, there arose a rebirth of Christianity, the Jesus People. The Children of God was at the cutting edge of this movement. It is behind the curtains of this enigmatic group that our story unfolds."
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