Decision to ban colander from driver's license photo strains belief

Eric Zorn

In a particularly grim week for news, the story of the suburban woman who is being denied the right to appear on her driver's license wearing a noodle strainer on her head has provided some comic relief.

The background: On June 27, 21-year-old college student Rachel Hoover, of Arlington Heights, went to get her license renewed at the Illinois Secretary of State facility in Schaumburg. She told employees that she wanted to wear a metal colander on her head for the photo in honor of her religious beliefs.

Employees balked, but Hoover insisted. The distinctive headgear is a symbol for those who claim membership in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a loose affiliation of skeptics whose purported belief system satirizes claims made by conventional religions.

The origin document for the church is a 2005 open letter from Oregon State University physics graduate student Bobby Henderson to the Kansas State Board of Education. That body was considering giving equal time in public school biology classes to evolution and "intelligent design," a theological explanation for the origins of life, and Henderson demanded that similar emphasis be placed on his "strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster," an unseen but meddlesome deity whose existence can be inferred but not proved.

The letter went viral and Henderson's idea sparked a minor social movement along with the 2006 publication of a 197-page "Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster." Adherents — called "Pastafarians" — began injecting their unusual claims into political arguments about religion and, every so often, wearing spaghetti strainers on their heads in public.

Illinois secretary of state guidelines allow for religious exemptions to the general prohibition against hats or other head-coverings in driver's license photos — Jews who wish to wear yarmulkes, for instance, or Muslim women who wish to wear a hijab. But when the central office discovered that employees had relented and allowed Hoover to be photographed with the strainer on her head, administrators drew the line, even though her face was clearly visible.

They told Hoover her license will be revoked July 29 unless she gets a new, strainer-free photo taken. She is exploring her legal options.

State officials are "just trying to use a little common sense," secretary of state spokesman Dave Druker told Tribune freelance reporter Lee V. Gaines. "It almost looks like Pastafarians are a mockery of religion."

There's no "almost" about it. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM for short) is a broad spoof on all supernatural belief systems that ask for special treatment by citing the constitutional guarantee of free exercise of religion.

Implicit in the spoof is a challenge: What makes FSM's claims about the invisible force that controls the universe any less plausible or less deserving of legal protection than those of established faiths? Popularity? Longevity? Earnestness?

The Constitution is appropriately silent on such considerations, as one of the principles undergirding the First Amendment is that government shouldn't referee religious matters.

Your belief that inspires you to want to wear something on your head for your driver's license photo is valid. But another person's is not.

Several states have played along. Utah in 2014 and Massachusetts in 2015 allowed Pastafarians to pose for driver's license photos with colanders on their heads. But New Jersey rejected such an attempt in 2013, and earlier this year a federal judge in Nebraska dismissed a suit filed by a Pastafarian state prison inmate demanding the right to hold FSM worship services and to wear a pirate costume (don't ask).

U.S. District Judge John Gerrard's 16-page ruling creditably wrestled with trying to distinguish the plaintiff's expressed beliefs from those espoused by those of mainstream faiths. "This case is difficult because FSM-ism, as a parody, is designed to look very much like a religion," he wrote. But "it is evident to the court that FSM-ism is not a belief system addressing deep and imponderable matters. ... The only position it takes is that others' religious beliefs should not be presented as science."

The judge added: "It is no more tenable to read the FSM gospel as proselytizing for supernatural spaghetti than to read Jonathan Swift's 'Modest Proposal' as advocating cannibalism."

Yes and no. The deliberate absurdity of FSM's claims represents a comprehensive atheistic/humanistic worldview that courts have found worthy of legal protection. The satirical jabs of Pastafarians may not have the historical gravity of scriptural pronouncements, but they're part of a serious philosophy that does, in fact, directly address "deep and imponderable matters."

Comic relief, yes, but the imperative here is no joke: If others have the right to have their opinions of the divine reflected in their driver's license photos, then so should Rachel Hoover.

A 6 with a sense of humor and creative intelligence is an 8.5

And that, Tad, is precisely why I think tattoos are stupid.

Brilliant.

If this is what passes for 'brilliant' these days, that's distressing.

Solid shoutout. JORR won't like this though.

Why do you say that?

Why do you say that?

I wasn't serious. Iirc, you've said before although you are athiest or agnostic or whatever you find the pastafarian thing distasteful. I think in situations like this though it is useful.

I wasn't serious. Iirc, you've said before although you are athiest or agnostic or whatever you find the pastafarian thing distasteful. I think in situations like this though it is useful.

I'm pretty religious about the White Sox and I'd prefer not to remove my cap for the photo.

It will be interesting the first time someone opens up a "church" based on this same concept.

"You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion." - L. Ron Hubbard.

then...shouldn't you be wearing the bucket ?