X-Message-Number: 24394 Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 07:22:41 -0700 (PDT) From: William O'Rights <> Subject: Re: CryoNet #24389 - #24392 You know your getting off to a bad start when your an immortalist and one member is painting you as a mortalist, when someone you have admired for years sends you hate mail telling you to post somewhere else, and the Father of Immortality, a living legend (whom I admire and respect) is implying that you are somewhat less than an advocate for Immortality and the practice of cryonics. It may take a few weeks before I am ready to respond to Robert Ettinger Kobayashi Maru test, in the meantime, in hope that I might persuade some of you that I have a passion for Immortality and the practice cryonics, I'll offer these past postings. Question: Is HB 2637 Unconstitutional? CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS INVOLVED United States Constitution Bill of Rights A. FIRST AMENDMENT OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, B. FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Universal Life Extension Church Inc. Mission: Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of all religions, we seek Physical Immortality as a desired and promised goal. This is our hope. This is our faith. This is our deeply-felt (held) religious belief and we are wholly opposed to the state being used to compel, prohibit, or persecute the free exercise of our religion. On behalf of the many individual members Universal Life Extension Church Inc. who have chosen to practice their faith, we ask that you do not subject individuals to the potentially unconstitutional regulation proposed in HB 2637. The HB 2637 restrictions would serve to undermine the current religious practices of the members of the Universal Life Extension Church who use Cryonics as an alternative approach to funeral arrangements, in that the body is frozen indefinitely in the hope that some time in the future it will be possible for the person to be brought back to life. These matters, involve the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, and are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. As stated in Casey, 505 U.S., at 851, Beliefs about these matters could not define... were they formed under compulsion of the State." Our practices may be unorthodox, but that's no reason why they should be regulated, for religious freedom - the freedom to believe and to practice strange and foreign creeds - has classically been one of the highest values of our society. See, e. g., Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105, 115 (1943); Jones v. City of Opelika, 319 U.S. 103 (1943); Martin v. City of Struthers, 319 U.S. 141 (1943); Follett v. Town of McCormick, 321 U.S. 573 (1944); Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501, 510 (1946). If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in religion. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to the members of Universal Life Extension Church. HB 2637 interferes with our" last rite" by interfering with our First Right. With the very best of reasons our Government should loath to interfere with anyone's - but anyone's - religious practices if it can possibly avoid such tampering. We contend that the HB 2637 will prohibit the free exercise of our religion. We hold that HB 2637, as construed and applied to the our members, deprives us of our liberty without due process of law in contravention of the Fourteenth Amendment. The fundamental concept of liberty embodied in that Amendment embraces the liberties guaranteed by the First Amendment. The First Amendment declares that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the "free exercise" thereof. The Fourteenth Amendment has rendered the legislatures of the states as incompetent as Congress to enact such laws. The men who led the fight for adoption of our Constitution and also for our Bill of Rights gave us the very guarantees of religious freedom that forbid the sort of governmental activity which Arizona is attempting here. Our review of HB 2637 confirms that the proposed law in question is being proposed by officials who do not understand, fail to perceive, or chose to ignore the fact that their official actions are in violation of the Nation's essential commitment to religious freedom. It should be up to us to decide and choose which method of burial is appropriate for us, traditional in-the-ground, or cryonic interment. While cryonic internment is relatively new, we are dealing with rights older than the Bill of Rights and older than our two political parties, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. Arizona should not fall into the trap of making up laws that force people to conform to state practices, especially in such obvious aspects as the "rites" of what is done with the body after death. That should be a matter of personal taste and belief. The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles. Ones right to life, liberty, and property, freedom of worship and free excercise of religion and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote. Since the earliest days men have dreamed of a country where the mind and spirit of man would be free, where men would be free to explore the unknown and to challenge the most deeply rooted beliefs and principles. Our First Amendment was a bold effort to adopt this principle. The Framers believed that the ultimate happiness and security of a nation lies in its ability to explore, to change, to grow and ceaselessly to adapt itself to new knowledge born of inquiry free from any kind of governmental control over the mind and spirit of man. The rights to free excercise of religion to which appeal was made in the American Revolution were rights understood to inhere in all men simply as men. In no small measure, that was why they were asserting their independence. These rights were understood to be knowable by all men capable of fully developed, unassisted reasoning. In particular, the rights were not understood as dependent on or derivative from divine revelation. These rights were not regarded as having been granted or created by any human act or agency or historical process. They therefore could not be superseded, revoked, or even surrendered. They were, in Paine s words, indefeasible or, as the Declaration of Independence has it, unalienable. But the rights were not merely asserted to be unalienable, inherent in all men, and knowable by reason; they were held to be so because and only because they were natural -the essential and undeniable endowments of human nature. While it was readily conceded that the nature and hence the natural rights of man are better recognized in some times and places than in others, the rights were nonetheless understood to be in principle derivable, in all places and at all times, from the rational or scientific study of human nature. The rights were the product not of revelation, history, culture, or creativity but of nature. As the Declaration stated clearly, rights are not a gift from government. They are natural and unchanging, inherent in the nature of mankind and possessed by people by virtue of their humanity. What is important is that rights are imprescriptible, that is, not granted by another human. In particular, they are not granted by government; people form governments in order to protect the rights they already possess. We argue that is intuitively right that we enjoy the security of such rights; the burden of explanation should lie with those who would take these rights away. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It is the highest authority. No person, and no branch of government, not the president, not Congress, and certainly not the Arizona State Legislature, has the right to set the Constitution aside, its words and its rules are law. As such, we cannot subscribe to the omnipotence of the state legislature, or that it is absolute and without control as it's authority is expressly restrained by the Constitution. No man should be compelled to refrain from acts which the Constitution and the Bill of Rights permit. There are acts which the State Legislature cannot do, without exceeding their authority. This proposed Act of the legislature (for we cannot call it a law) contrary to the great first principles of the First Amendment cannot be considered a rightful exercise of legislative authority. It is unconstitutional as the proposed statute directly restrains the free exercise of our religion. The First Amendment is clear enough that people on opposite sides of this issue can agree on what it commands. This proposed statute finds no support in the words of the Constitution, in fact this is not what the First Amendment requires; it is what the First Amendment forbids. We hold that there are absolutes in our Bill of Rights, and that they were put there by men who knew what words meant, and meant their prohibitions to be absolute. The whole history and background of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights belies the assumption or conclusion that our ultimate constitutional freedoms are no more than our English ancestors had when they came to this new land to get new freedom. The historical and practical purposes of a Bill of Rights, the very use of a written constitution, indigenous to America, the language the framers used, the kind of three-department government they took pains to set up, all point to the creation of a government which was denied all power to do some things under any and all circumstances, and all power to do other things except in the manner prescribed. Our Constitution may be old, but it is not outdated, and at any rate not all old things are bad. The evils it guards against are timeless. We ask Arizona to uphold the commitment to individual liberty as untold tens of thousands have died for that commitment in our comparatively short history. Let us live in the America that exist as the beacon of liberty, providing light and hope and inspiration to the entire world, let us live in the America of Washington, Jefferson and Madison, let us live in the America our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us when they enacted the Constitution and Bill of Rights. In other lands freedom to exercise Religion are not allowed, we must make efforts here to keep them free. In other lands Religions are threatened by intolerance, we must provide a safe place for their perpetuation. The fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands, they must be made brighter in our own because the benefits of liberty are boundless and the tyrannies of government can be limitless as well. Freedom, the greatest of all earthly blessings, give us that precious jewel and you may take everything else.... Live Long and Well Rev. William C. O'Rights PhD Founder and President Universal Life Extension Church, Inc. ===== William Constitution O'Rights The First Immortal __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone. http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=24394