"How is it fraudulent to be a witch and not fraudulent to be a preacher? How does a government decide which spiritual adviser out of 2000 different beliefs is correct and which 1999 are frauds?"Your premise that the government decided one belief was correct and outlawed the other 1999 is false. They only outlawed the "for pay" services of palm reading, fortune telling and spiritism, (contacting the dead or spirits).
There are differences.
- Unlike churches, the palm readers and spiritists aren't providing their service for free to the community and accepting donations.
- Even today 92% of Americans recognize that God does exist. I believe all palm readers are frauds, and most spiritists are pretending and don't really contact spirits. But how you prove that they have no power, I don't know. In Louisiana it may have been assumed that none had any power, therefore the sell of any such services were fraudulent. Or the state may have sent someone in to purchase their services, and if the spiritists told them something that didn't come true, they busted them. I really don't know.