Happy Vegetables Notebook Entry No. 5

Item: Information for Press reporters in the UDV Supreme court case.

The case in question is Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal, and had to do with a “religious freedom” appeal filed by U.S. members of the União do Vegetal regarding their use of psychoactive plants in religious rituals.

There’s an interesting case study (PR-Br) on the Web site of the Brazilian presidency, which I may get around to translating.

Why do I mention it? I admit, it is a bit of an odd topic for someone mainly interested these days in (1) enterprise technology big digs and, non-professionally, (2) the Charles Bukowsi Memorial Center for Classical Latin Studies.

And Latin America bluegrass music, of course — mandolins, cavacos, violas caipiras, banjos and berimbaus. The twang’s the thang.

But it keeps coming up in the most unlikely contexts.

See A Psychedelic Reagan Revolution in the Concrete Jungle and Ayahuasca and the Economic Hit Man, for example.

Mr. Murilo of the Brazilian federal MiniCult, for example — a Brazilian quango operator and blogging-industrial evangelist whose activivities I have gotten interested in following, as a specimen case of a certain, er, innovative approach to political activism and democratic governance — moonlights as the “worldwide” Webmaster for the related Santo Daime movement.

A number of other folks at (Hearing) Global Voices Online have ties to “faith-based organizations” as well.

The U.S. Dept. of State has ponied up a fair amount of public money to “media democracy promotion” projects, with matching contributions by politically active religious organizations, as I have noted.

See Alt.Finance and the Anti-MSM and From the Jihadis For Jesus “Good News for Modern Man 2.0″ Gnostic Apocalypse Consumerism Files.

But the IRS has been notably humorless about the New Philanthropreneurshipism — aka “rendering unto Elmer Gantry that which is Caesar’s” — and apparently getting more so.

See Tax Man to Philanthropreneurs: Quem Não Deve Não Teme, and, for a Brazilian version of the debate, Dilma: All Quangos Are Created Equal.

All of which piques my curiosity about the influential role of Moonies on the world stage these days.

I am not especially tolerant of Moonies myself.

The personal dimension of my knee-jerk hostility to faith-based approaches to aeronautical engineering is sketched out in Spinning the World Backwards and, if you can slog through it, the NM(M-TV)SNBCNNBS 2006 Blog Year in Review

Obviously, watching religious fanatics crash big fucking airplanes into a building I used to work in may have something to do with it, too.

Opus Dei, for example, played a signficant role in the last Brazilian presidential election, though the opposition candidate downplayed the connection.

Add to that the recent success here in Brazil of legal arguments designed to undermine the authority of “traditional” medical experts in regulating the public health aspects of psychoactive plants.

In current newsflow, Pope Benedict DCLXVI and George “I Answer to a Higher Father” Bush II are about to land in São Paulo in close succession.

So what do the “Want to be happy? Become a vegetable!” crowd have to say for themselves?

(1) The name “União do Vegetal” in the regional Brazilian dialect spoken in the Amazon forest, where this religion was first established, means “The Union of The Plants”. The name refers to the union of the two plants that together create the sacrament of UDV, and allow for the possibility of spiritual union with the Light and Divine Consciousness, which is God.

The name União do Vegetal also means approximately that in non-regional, standard Portuguese.

No familiarity with endangered Arawak languages or theories of linguistic substrates is required to decipher the phrase. Camões and Fernando Pessoa would have no problem understanding what it means.

I have always understood that regional variants on Brazilian Portuguese do not rise to the level of difference required for predicating the term “dialect” of them, tchê. But I could be wrong.

But the UDV — most of them a bunch of urban New Agers — are always anxious to claim themselves as the legitimate heirs to the millenia-old traditions of indigenous vegetable rites.

The jaguar-monkey god gave them a diploma to that effect, but you can’t see it unless you take hoasca yourself. That sort of thing.

(2) The pejorative use of the term “hallucinogen” to describe the UDV’s religious sacrament is inaccurate, and a deliberate attempt by the government defendants to discredit the UDV’s religious practice. Uncontroverted evidence presented to the district court demonstrated that the hallucinations characteristic of LSD and recreational drug use do not occur within the religious context at issue in this case. The effect of drinking the tea for the UDV members is an enhanced state of spiritual awareness through which the adherents receive communion with the Divine and greater insight into the UDV’s religious doctrine.

The problematic ingredient is dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, is generally classified under “traditional” medical science as a psychedelic tryptamine, and more generally as a psychoactive drug, characterized as a drug that

cause(s) subjective changes in perception, thought, emotion and consciousness. Unlike other psychoactive drugs, such as stimulants and opioids, the hallucinogens do not merely amplify familiar states of mind, but rather induce experiences that are qualitatively different from those of ordinary consciousness.

Thus we seem to have the argument that the changes in perception, thought, emotion and consciousness caused by the drug in a religious content are not subjective, but rather part of a genuine relationship with an objective spiritual reality.

An argument that they apparently asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take seriously.

Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, sent the case back to a lower court for reconsideration, with instructions to give the government another chance to meet its burden of proof, after finding it

failed to demonstrate a compelling interest in applying the Controlled Substances Act to the UDV’s sacramental use of the tea.

I will have to study up on that. The consequences of the case for jurisprudence on the Establishment Clause is being hotly debated.

Sidley Austin, for examples, notes that it is actively pursuing the precedent on behalf of religious non-profits it represents.

Sidley Austin LLP has filed an amicus brief in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on behalf of a broad coalition of religious organizations in the case of Living Water Church of God v. Meridian Charter Township, No. 05-2309 (6th Cir.). The case involves the denial by the municipal zoning authority of a request by a local Church of God congregation to expand its facilities to accommodate its growing ministry. The district court entered judgment in favor of the church under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA), finding that the township’s actions had substantially burdened the church’s religious exercise and that the township had not demonstrated that its denial was justified by a compelling governmental interest. Sidley’s brief urged the Sixth Circuit to affirm the district court’s decision and specifically adopt a standard for “substantial burden” under RLUIPA that would protect religious organizations from adverse governmental land-use decisions that had a tendency to inhibit religious exercise. The brief also urged the appeals court to apply to RLUIPA the United States Supreme Court’s recent decision in Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal, which held that governmental actors under the “compelling interest” test cannot rely on the mere invocation of broad governmental interests but must show they have a compelling interest that cannot be satisfied without burdening the religious exercise of the particular claimant.

A technical point of interest:

(3) The seizure of the UDV’s sacrament in May of 1999 occurred at the UDV’s offices in Santa Fe, New Mexico, not at any UDV member’s home.

I have not read the briefs yet, but I will. What are the implications for the organization’s tax-free status if it gets caught running its ayahuasca tea parties out of a private residence?

What is the purpose of this Web site?

The purpose of this website is to present clearly and thoroughly all the facts of this case. We hope the media will accurately report on the issues at hand.

The media should stop reporting that ayahuasca produces hallucinations and start reporting that it produces legitimate, direct knowledge of the spiritual realm and its transcendental pantheon of wise spirit animals.

Whom it should not, however, confuse with the evil, invisible Psychlons that the Church of Scientology e-meter is designed to “clear” you of.

The Psychlons come from planet Psychlo, are about 10 feet tall, and look suspiciously like members of the metal band Kiss (film review).

The media should stop questioning the credibility of people who are in the habit of inducing profound states of psychosis in themselves.

They sound just like the White House press secretary.

I actually kind of liked John Travolta’s film version of Battlefield Earth — as a sci-fi film.

But as to whether or not ayahuasca is an hallucinogen seems to me to imply a rather thorny theological questions.

Theology, by definition, being the study of matters that transcend the human capacity to know and understand.

Which make them, by definition, rather hard to fact-check, and therefore kind of thorny to write about on a space-time deadline in the empire of illusion that is the Plato’s cave we find ourselves confined to for our sins.

I tend to be a Wittgensteinian on such matters:

That whereof we cannot speak meaningfully we must pass over in silence.

Which would also, I think, imply passing on giving people public money for faith-based efforts to legislate away the laws of thermodynamics.

The UDV does not seek publicity. If, after reading all the material on this site, you still have any unanswered questions about this case, journalists are welcome to e-mail your questions to: udvlegal@aol.com

Right. It does not seek publicity, but its adherents do seek, and obtain, public funding and legal protection for its projects, and political office.

As I mentioned, our PT-MTV vereadora here in São Paulo, Soninha, is apparently involved in the neo-ayahuasqueiro movement here, for example.

If I had the time, I would do up a clippings file on her recent media appearances, in which she pointedly refuses to sit in a chair in the traditional manner, but rather assumes the full lotus and utters the most astonishing nonsense.

An excellent argument for switching out proportional representation — voting for a slate, and the party hands out the resulting slots like, er, party favors — for direct representation.

This neighborhood — where Marxist materialist labor unionists and god-fearing evangelicals, and God knows what all, rub shoulders and watch one another’s back in imperfect but functioning amity — is already trippy enough when you are relatively sober.

Take the enormous cururu — a Godzilla-sized local hypnotoad — that Neuza found in the drain the other day.

That was trippy. And we were totally straight, mind you, and even refrained from licking the thing.

What it really needs in the city and state legislatures is a hardnosed hard-hat who can push through the infrastructure projects we need to prevent further smoking holes in the ground.

We have already heard quite enough of the former governor’s “It was the will of God” excuse, which he will be taking on the road to the Kennedy School at Harvard soon.

See also my Lula, Scourge of God.

That guy is accredited to hand out MBAs. Think about it.

I say all that, of course, without the right to vote here in Brazil, and don’t plan on becoming a citizen.

But I do have a CPF and pay taxes, you know. And we Brooklynites are known for being pushy loudmouths.

And freaking proud of it, too. Fuhgeddabouddid!

The latest cheap botequim philosophy summit of the Forum de São Paulo, O Sachina, Sumarezinho-Vilabia. The beer is certified estupidamente gelada. The assigned text is by Donald Westlake (1970). The Marlboros may or may not be Paraguayan knock-offs. Stop ogling my wife.

I actually get mail sometimes saying that I am (1) unfair to ayahuasqueiros, and displeasing the jaguar-monkey gods, for which I will suffer karmically, or (2) don’t know what the fuck I am talking about because I have not taken the ayahuasca.

Maybe.

But one of these days I will tell you the enormously embarrassing story about how, as a freaked out young man, I once took peyote and met my spirit animals: Enormous telepathic whales swimming in the warm depths of an infinite ocean of honey and singing like divine tubas!

This is actually a true story, I swear.

I was into some weird stuff at that age.

And as I do not ever expect to become a Mormon bishop, be confirmed for the federal judiciary, or work for the FBI, I guess I can tell this story now.

Those kind, Aslan-like whales actually gave me some excellent advice, including (1) “Stop taking those psychedelic drugs! There’s no need! You’re killing yourself!” (2) “You realize, of course, that this is all just a metaphor?” and (3) “Don’t follow leaders, or watch the parking meters.”

The peyote whales have never steered me wrong.