North Carolina Teen Challenged on Her Piercing Faith

Ariana Iacono is like any other teen in America: she likes to hang out with her friends, is interested in boys, and is a member of the Church of Body Modification.

Say what? The Church of Body Modification?

Yes, you heard right, the Church of Body Modification. For some reason I have this image of a navel ring built to monumental scale and made of titanium. Well, poor Ariana has been suspended from her high school, Clayton High School in Raleigh, North Carolina for her nose piercing. Being only 14, Ariana felt her religious rights have been violated by the school. There is only one problem here: even though the Church of Body Modification may be registered as a legal religious group, the name itself has about zero credibility to it. The worship of body modification? Maybe only if you happen to be Papuan. Even though body piercing and tattooing has become the norm now (my husband and I like to joke how we're the only two people in the state who do not have body piercings or tattoos, and my double pierced ears do not count) having them might be best suited for people who want to have a career at McDonald's. But since Ariana is not that old enough yet to flip burgers for a living, both she and her 32 year old mother Nikki are going to the ACLU over the matter. The Church of Body Modification claims approximately 3,500 members who all have a body piercing of some kind aside from the socially accepted pierced earlobes. While the church body is non-denomination and is in fact non-deist, for that matter, it hardly qualifies as being a real church. There isn't even any set of rites except getting your nose or eyebrow pierced while a Samoan drum is quietly pounded in the background. However the ACLU has never been adverse to the most kooky of theologies, if the Church of Body Modification can even claim to have one. This group makes the Church of the Cosmic Bunny look absolutely legitimate and credible. At least they can claim lineage to Unut, the bunny headed goddess of Ancient Egypt. But the Church of Body Modification (yes, they even have members in the heart of the Bible Belt, which is curious, since the Hebrews of the Old Testament [Leviticus 19:28] were prohibited under law to have tattoos or body modification period) is going a bit overboard here, and many people will consider Ariana to have overreacted to the situation. It's a nose ring, something she chose to have. And since the Johnston County school system prohibits facial piercings of any kind, maybe Ariana would be better off removing that nose ring until she can at least finish a half-decent education that public schools offer kids until she can get that burger flipping job at MickeyD's.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_rel_piercing_church

http://uscobm.com/