After being allowed to wear a pasta strainer on her head for her driver’s license, Miller said, “As a member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I feel delighted that my Pastafarianism has been respected by the MA RMV”.
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“If people are given the right to wear religious garments in government ID photos, then this must extend to people who follow the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster”, David Niose, legal director of the Appignani Humanist Legal Center, told the Washington Times. Miller took issue with the MA Registry of Motor Vehicles’ decision to deny her right to wear the colander because, she said, the colander is a symbol of her religion.
Members of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, often criticized for being a parody religion, have argued that other religious head garb is allowed in driver’s license photos.
When Miller initially applied for her driver’s license, she was denied the ability to wear the colander.
However, it costs $25 to be ordained as a Pastafarian minister.
At the end of his letter, Henderson included a drawing of “Him” – the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
In regards to the August incident in which Miller was denied a license renewal, she claims that the RMV employees “were kind of laughing” at her and that she “thought of other religions and women and thought that” what was happening “was not fair”. Occasionally, though, such an action results in the government saying that maybe wearing a spaghetti strainer on your head isn’t actually legal, and you can’t do that.
Attorneys from the American Humanist Association’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center put Miller in touch with Patty DeJuneas, a member of the Secular Legal Society.
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Though the RMV aggreed to allow Miller to wear the strainer in the photo, the organization did not have a comment on Friday.
