Word: torcaso
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...Torcaso, a senior citizen who said he has been active with the group Death with Dignity for many years, said he supports euthanasia because all individuals should have the right to choose how to deal with their suffering...
...only the person who is afflicted with some illness or terminal disease who should have the right to make a choice [of life or death] and he should have a choice without any limitation," said Torcaso, who is a former president of The Humanist Association of the Capital Area, Washington...
...traced to the fact that the U.S. Constitution forbids religious test oaths for any public official. Maryland's constitution does the same-but it also orders officials to declare "belief in the existence of God." In 1961, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld Maryland Notary Public Roy R. Torcaso, who refused to sign such a declaration because he was an atheist. The religious requirement, said the court, "unconstitutionally invades freedom of belief and religion...
...until this fall did the Maryland Court of Appeals finally bow to the "inevitable result" of the 1961 Torcaso decision. Then it bowed with a vengeance. The court reversed the murder conviction of a Buddhist named Lidge Schowgurow, who claimed that he had been denied equal protection while on trial for killing his wife (TIME, Oct. 22). Since Buddhists do not believe in God, he argued that members of his faith were automatically excluded from his jury. Even though no Buddhist would-be jurors were involved, the court upheld Schowgurow and voided the "belief in God" requirement for jurors throughout...
...Child of God." Applying the Torcaso doctrine to Seeger's case, the three-judge Court of Appeals panel held that it is unconstitutional for Congress to select belief in a Supreme Being as the criterion of true religion. The term religion, said the court, does not necessarily imply belief in a supernatural power. Today, "commitment to a moral ideal is for many the equivalent of what was historically considered the response to divine commands." The draft law discriminates against those who hold sincere religious beliefs not based upon faith in a Supreme Being. And that discrimination violates the Fifth...