Exorcism Legal in GA

Exorcism Alive and Well in Gwinnett County, Georgia.

At least, that is what the title of the news story should have been.

A mother was charged with cruelty to children and false imprisonment when she used handcuffs, food and water deprivation during an attempted three-day exorcism of her fifteen year old son. The charges were dropped yesterday.

This is disturbing to me, on several levels, but what really makes me nuts is this quote from the judge who made the ruling:

I have a hard time believing you’re going to get anybody to say in Gwinnett County, Georgia, that Satan doesn’t exist, that the Bible doesn’t exist, that the actual biblical descriptions of possession are not true. You’re not going to get anybody to say that’s all false. So it’s going to be really hard to claim that the basic precept behind any of her actions were false, malicious or criminal.

I’m willing to give this judge the benefit of the doubt. This is only three sentences and may be taken out of context. The context that it is presented in, however, implies that the judge thinks that Christians have a right to perform brutal medieval rituals on their children in the name of behavior modification. This would not fly if the family were Moslem, Jewish or atheist.

So! Everybody go out and torture a family member. When you’re questioned about it, just wave the bible.