by Richard W. Millar, Jr.

When alert reader Donna Fouste tipped me to this story, I thought it was one of those Internet fakes. After extensive research, lasting at least ten minutes, I determined that it was either true or a whole bunch of media outlets were fooled.

So I am going with true.

The question is: What do you get when you cross a former porn star with a kitchen utensil and the Department of Motor Vehicles? The answer, as you can see, is a column.

Working backwards, the motor vehicle department in this case is located in Saint George, Utah, a state with, as you will see, a highly acute sensitivity to religion.

The kitchen utensil in question is a colander. (And you thought the title was a misprint and were all ready to complain to the editor.) A colander, as most of you may know, is essentially a large sieve which is used to drain pasta such as, in this case, spaghetti. (In my college days, I thought spaghetti came in a can and it never occurred to me that it actually had to be made and strained, but I digress.)

What I’ll bet you didn’t know is that a colander can double as a hat.

The woman in question is one whose name is either Jessica Steinhauser, Asia Lemmon, or her nom de porn, Asia Carrera. She is a self-described atheist. She is also, and you may think there is a contradiction here, a member of a church.

If I were in trial at this point and there was an objection, I would say something like, “Please give me some leeway, Your Honor, I will connect these things up.”

The church (and I am using editorial lower case) is something called, and I am not making this up because if I were I would do a better job of it, “The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.” I have to confess to having led a cloistered life because I never heard of a spaghetti monster, airborne or land-based. And I had a hard time visualizing what he, and I am guessing on gender here, might look like. However, he is depicted on the church’s website as a mass of spaghetti with two meatballs for, I suppose, his eyes. Tee shirts, if you are so inclined, are offered for sale.

According to reports, the church was started in 2005 as a protest to a decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to allow instruction in “intelligent design” as a counterweight to Darwinian evolution. Adherents, if that’s the right word, are called “pastafarians.” If you wish to become a Pastafarian Minister, you can purchase an “official ordination certificate” for $20 which, I’m guessing, is equivalent to a donation of roughly $19.99.

The “official” headgear of the church is a colander.

So now that I have connected the woman and the kitchen utensil. How does the St. George DMV fit in?

The St. George office of the Utah DMV issues, as you would expect, driver’s licenses. As in California, those licenses require a photograph of the driver. Most motor vehicle departments have policies against wearing items that would obscure the driver’s face, because, after all, that would defeat the purpose of having the photos in the first place. These policies sometimes collide with religious requirements, so the departments sometimes have to walk a fine line between religious expression and facial recognition.

Ms. Steinhauser, and I am using her nom de drive as opposed to her nom de porn since that is driver’s license oriented, and I have absolutely no idea what her real name is, insisted on her right to express her religion by wearing a colander on her head for her license photo.

I don’t know about you, but I’m betting this caused a few moments hesitation at the counter. I can see a clerk quickly thumbing the index of the department’s training manual, trying unsuccessfully to find “colander.”

In any event, armed “with documents indicating her religious freedom”—and I’m not sure what those would be—the DMV relented and now, for the world (and the Utah Highway Patrol) to see, is Ms. Steinhauser with a colander on her head.

Well, I always like to rise to a challenge and see if I can do her one better. The next time I get my license renewed, I am going to ask that my picture be taken with my seeing eye dog.

Richard W. Millar, Jr. is a member of the firm of Millar, Hodges & Bemis in Newport Beach. He can be reached at millar@mhblaw.net.