The Supreme Court's decision in Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal prohibiting the government from restricting a religious sect's use of hallucogenic tea shows the court is headed towards protecting religious liberties. 

With a ruling that could have significant implications for the future of church-and-state relations in this country, the newly-realigned U.S. Supreme Court has suggested that religious liberty may, after all, be its constitutional cup of tea. 

In the case of Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal, the court ruled unanimously last month that the federal government could not arbitrarily prohibit a small religious sect from using a hallucinogenic tea in its sacraments.  In addition, the state would have to produce sufficient evidence showing that the group's violation of an otherwise generally-applicable law (the Controlled Substances Act) overrides their freedom to worship as they see fit. 

To be fair, the court is not endorsing hallucinogenics and did not suggest that government enforcement won't eventually carry the day.  It merely required that the government make a legally compelling case.  But that in itself marks one of the warmest receptions that proponents of religious liberty have gotten from the high court in the last 15 years. 

Over those two decades, the growing nationwide infatuation with self-entitlement and victimization, and the resulting surfeit of so-called "non-discrimination" laws aimed at enforcing politically-correct attitudes on the populace, has put more and more individual citizens - especially those of faith - on a collision course with their own government. 

What, after all, is one to do if his deepest moral convictions run counter to the prevailing cultural winds - and the tenor of the courts is tuned to the activists' key?  Can the state force you to aid, abet, or accommodate activities that you find offensive, or - worse - that you consider spiritually self-destructive for all involved?  If the government compels you to legally embrace what you find morally repellant …do you still have the right to "just say ‘no'"? 

For beleaguered men, women, and children all over America, these are increasingly serious questions.  God-fearing citizens who ask nothing more than the freedom to stand by their own conscience find themselves experiencing what George Will once called "history from the receiving end": 

• In Alaska, a landlord refused to rent out an apartment to a young couple who weren't married.  The landlord was cited for marital status discrimination, and sued.

• In Minnesota, the owner of a bridal shop balked at selling one of her gowns to a lesbian couple planning a ceremony she considered a sin.  They sued, too.

• In Kentucky, a judge has ruled that children can't opt out of "diversity training" in their public school…so they're required to take time out from the reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic for indoctrination in homosexual behavior.

• In California, a gynecologist demurred when asked to artificially inseminate one of the partners in a lesbian relationship, fearing for the future of a child raised in a homosexual environment.  The partners filed suit to force the doctor to comply with their request.

• In Virginia and Florida, the owners of two local print shops refused to print materials promoting, respectively, homosexual activities and the Wiccan religion.  Both the homosexual advocates and the witches found a basis to sue.

For people like these, the Gonzales decision is much more than a tempest in a teapot.  It's a break of light on a dark legal horizon, and - coupled with the court's same-day decision to re-hear the case against partial-birth abortion - unmistakable evidence that the highest limb of the judicial branch may be retracing its own constitutional roots…and rediscovering its conscience. 

In a day when fast-growing governments are finding increasingly intrusive ways to pervade the private lives of their citizens, it's more crucial than ever that the courts defend the most basic rights of all Americans, and especially their freedom to worship and believe.  Lashed by the academes and the media and yes, even the jurists of the Left, federal, state, and local governments are under increasing pressure to coerce their citizens into a single, politically-correct mindset.  The depth and breadth of our religious liberties is perhaps the surest ongoing gauge of the triumph of freedom over the demands of leftist orthodoxy. 

Yes, the sanctified swigging of hallucinogenic liquids may be a bit of an earl grey area, even for the religious groups most likely to benefit from this crucial ruling.  And, obviously, the tea leaves are a little murky when it comes to foretelling the mind of a newly-reconfigured Supreme Court.  But millions of Americans have been a long time praying for our courts to turn a kinder gaze on religious liberty cases. 

And if the Gonzales decision is any indication … something good is finally brewing.