Texas Exoricism Case May Be Appealed : Dispatches from the Culture Wars

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Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of Michigan Citizens for Science and co-founder of The Panda's Thumb. He has written for such publications as The Bard, Skeptic and Reports of the National Center for Science Education, spoken in front of many organizations and conferences, and appeared on nationally syndicated radio shows and on C-SPAN. Ed is also a Fellow with the Center for Independent Media and the host of Declaring Independence, a one hour weekly political talk show on WPRR in Grand Rapids, Michigan.(static)

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Texas Exoricism Case May Be Appealed

Posted on: August 1, 2008 9:02 AM, by Ed Brayton

The case in Texas where the state Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit against a church for performing an exorcism on a 17 year old girl that resulted in physical and mental trauma may be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. I'm with Marci Hamilton on this one, the Texas court got it wrong. I hope the Supreme Court agrees to take the case.

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Allow me to play devil's advocate a little here, even though in this case I already came down on the side of the devil:

I think, given the set of issues the court was asked to consider, that they probably got it more right than wrong. The woman's suit was essentially based on a claim that she sufferred emotional/psychological trauma stemming primarily from believing the beliefs of the church. The other claims: physical restraint and abuse, were played up in coverage of the case, but as I read the ruling, i wasn't really what was under consideration for the damages she was awarded. They are essentially distractions from the issue: the woman's suffering, for which she sued, was inextricably tied to her fearing that evil spirits were influencing her.

You can of course argue that the court was looking at the case from the wrong perspective, or that it is, in fact, capable of precisely splitting out what emotional harms were caused by belief in demons, and what were caused by the incident itself.

But I think given how the issues were litagated, they got it right: people cannot sue for emotional trauma they sufferred because THEY, ultimately, chose to believe in demons. If that's the overriding reason for the suing for trauma, then it deserves to fail.

Posted by: Bad | August 1, 2008 10:19 AM