HURRICANE, Utah—When we knew Asia Carrera Back In The Day (1994), she'd only recently migrated from New Jersey to take the adult industry by storm, filming more than 300 movies before her retirement in 2003. We also knew her as a computer whiz, in a day when PCs were still fairly new, and she was pretty adept at repairing them as well—not too awfully surprising considering that she was (and perhaps still is) a member of the high-IQ society Mensa.
So perhaps it's also not too surprising that when she, an atheist, went in to renew her Utah driver's license, under her real name, she decided to identify her religion to the DMV as Pastafarian, otherwise known as the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose religious symbol is the colander—which Asia insisted she be allowed to wear for her driver's license photo. Pretty ballsy, considering that roughly 62 percent of the Utah population are members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints aka Mormon. Even better: They let her!
"I'm a really proud, outspoken atheist," Carrera told USAToday.com. "I am proud of Utah for allowing freedom of all religions in what is considered by many to be a one-religion state. I wanted to see if I could [wear the colander] in Utah. I wasn’t sure if they would let me."
See, several years ago, a guy named Bobby Henderson decided to take on the Kansas Board of Education, which had just approved allowing public school teachers to teach an "alternative" to the science of evolution known as "intelligent design," which is just creationism without the "god" reference. Henderson wrote the Board a letter suggesting that the reason carbon dating shows that the earth has existed for more than the 6,000 years Bible literalists claim is because a "supernatural being," resembling a plate of spaghetti and meatballs, has been "modifying the data with his Noodly Appendage." From that grew Pastafarianism, which apparently has millions of followers worldwide.
However, apparently Carrera isn't the first Pastafarian to have his/her driver's license photo taken with the holy colander. According to USAToday.com, "Nannette Rolfe, the director of Utah's Driver License Division, said about a dozen Pastafarians have had their state driver's license photos taken with a similar colander or pasta strainer on their heads in recent years."
And though Carrera said she's met with some initial resistance to the colander-wearing, once she showed the Department of Motor Vehicles personnel some documents discussing religious freedom, they allowed her to have her photo taken the way she wanted.
"I've always been a proud atheist, and I feel comfortable doing that even here," Carrera said. "Even though it's really conservative here, everyone has always been really sweet about [my religious views]."
Someone who wasn't so sweet about Carrera's religious views is Heather Clark, writing for ChristianNews.net and finding plenty of "meat" on the Pastafarian website.
After charging that Carrera's photo was "meant to mock Christianity and its beliefs," Clark quoted Henderson and his followers as stating that, "If you say Pastafarians must believe in a literal Flying Spaghetti Monster to be True Believers, then you can make a similar argument for Christians. There is a lot of outlandish stuff in the Bible that rational Christians choose to ignore. We do the same with our scripture. This is intentional."
"He boiled for your sins," states one poster Clark noted is featured on the site. Another parodies the biblical verse John 3:16 by making a reference to "Spaghetti 3:16," showing a man carrying a cross that reads "Pastafarianism."
Carrera apparently made the decision to "go Pastafarian" after her 9-year-old daughter was surfing the internet and found the Pastararian website.
