Posted on 07/14/2008 5:38:32 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
(Collision might be due to growth in municipalities not accustomed to lifestyle)
Among the 600,000-plus hunters heading out for last year’s gun-deer season were three Clark County brothers who were cited for not wearing blaze orange — clothing, they said, that was against their Amish religion.
Members of the religious sect noted for their black felt hats, dark trousers, long dresses and bonnets are barred from wearing bright clothing.
But a Clark County judge ruled last month that there’s nothing in the Amish religion that compels them to hunt deer. So each brother was fined $143.10.
It was the latest in a growing number of clashes between the Amish and governments in Wisconsin:
• An Amish man in Jackson County was fined $10,000 in March for failing to get a building permit. He was part of a small group of Amish farmers who did not get building permits because they say conforming to the state’s uniform dwelling code is against their beliefs.
• An Amish couple in Clark County was ordered last month to shut down their candy and jam business because they were running an unlicensed food processing establishment.
• A refusal by some Amish farmers to comply with the state’s livestock premises registration law — designed to quickly locate livestock herds in a disease outbreak — could lead to a showdown in court. Some Amish fear that if they register their farms, it could lead to the state requiring them to register their animals individually. They say that would be akin to “the number of the beast” in the Book of Revelation.
The culture collision might be due to the growth of Amish in places where municipalities are not accustomed to the group’s simple lifestyle that shuns electricity, phones and motor vehicles.
“Where the rub and irritation comes is when they move into new areas and the local officials don’t know how to relate to them and there’s no history of collaboration,” said Donald Kraybill, an Amish expert at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. “That might be happening in some places in Wisconsin because of the rapid increase and influx.”
Though there’s no comprehensive census of the Amish, Kraybill has tracked populations in states including Wisconsin by counting the number of settlements and church districts. According to his research, Wisconsin had 27 separate Amish settlements, 53 church districts and an estimated 7,150 adults and children in 1992.
In 2008, the figures had grown to 50 settlements, 115 church districts and 15,525 people.
The vast majority of Amish co-exist easily with non-Amish. Many move to Wisconsin in search of good farmland at relatively inexpensive prices.
But sometimes their wish for relative isolation collides with state and municipal regulations.
In November, Jacob J. Gingerich, 22, Aaron J. Gingerich, 17, and Herman Gingerich, 21, were cited for hunting deer on their family’s land near Loyal without wearing blaze orange clothing.
Their father, Jacob M. Gingerich, testified in Clark County Circuit Court that his family didn’t want to change the law but hoped for a compromise that would allow them to hunt on their property without having to wear the bright clothing designed to protect hunters from being mistaken for deer. He also said if they were forced to wear blaze orange, they wouldn’t hunt deer during the firearms season.
“We were hoping we could be exempted on our own place...our own land,” Jacob M. Gingerich told Judge Jon Counsell.
But a prosecutor pointed to statistics showing that a majority of firearm accidents during Wisconsin’s gun-deer season involved hunters in the same hunting party and most happened on private land.
“The orange clothing requirement is not an unconstitutional burden on defendants’ exercise of their religion,” Counsell wrote in his June 24 decision. He also noted that “nothing in the defendants’ religion compels them to hunt deer and hunting deer is not central to the Amish way of life.”
Darwin Zwieg has been district attorney for almost three decades in Clark County, which has a large Amish population. This was the first case he could recall involving Amish deer hunters claiming that wearing blaze orange was against their religious beliefs.
“Overall, they do their best to comply as long as it doesn’t interfere with what they believe to be their free exercise of their religion,” Zwieg said.
It was also in Clark County where Jonas and Katie Gingerich of Willard were ordered last month to stop making jam and candy they sold via mail order because they were operating a food-processing plant without a license, didn’t put required notices on candy that contained nuts and used an unapproved waste water disposal system.
In Jackson County, three cases are pending in the Town of Albion near Black River Falls involving Amish who did not get required building permits. In March, Daniel Borntreger, an Amish farmer who lives in the nearby Town of Franklin, was fined $10,600 for failing to get a permit before adding on to a building.
The pending cases involve Amish who claim it’s a violation of their religious faith to get a building permit, said Paul Millis, the attorney for the towns of Franklin and Albion.
“By having to comply with the uniform dwelling code their argument is they would have to change their ways so they’re in conformity with the rest of society and that violates their religious faith,” Millis said.
Though disputes between some Amish and the state’s 2-year-old livestock premises registration rule have not gone to court, state agriculture officials are preparing cases to forward to district attorneys who will ultimately decide whether to file complaints.
After pseudorabies was discovered last year on two Clark County swine farms — one Amish and one non-Amish — state health inspectors had to contact every farm within a five-mile radius. But since only half of those farms had registered with the state, it took inspectors two days to drive up every road in the outbreak area and alert farmers, something that had could have done much quicker by phone if they all had been registered under the state law, assistant state veterinarian Paul McGraw said.
“We’ve had a lot of Amish that have registered their premises, and we have a lot who are resistant to it. My understanding is that they’re not opposed to premise registration,” McGraw said, “but they’ve drawing their toe in the sand because it could lead to individual animal registration, which to them is the ‘mark of the beast.’ ”
Though some recent cases have gone against Amish defendants, Wisconsin courts have been friendly to the Amish in the past. In 1996, the state Supreme Court ruled that Wisconsin courts should apply a least restrictive alternative test when considering claims that laws or regulations violate freedom of religion. Once someone proves they have a sincerely held religious belief and is burdened by a state law, the burden shifts to the state to prove that the law is based on a compelling state interest that cannot be served by a lesser alternative.
In that 1996 case, the state Supreme Court ruled that a state law requiring the Amish to display a red and orange triangular emblem on the back of their slow-moving, horse-drawn buggies violated their religious freedom. Eight Amish men in Clark County who were cited for driving their buggies without the brightly colored signs offered to use white reflective tape, which the Supreme Court determined was an acceptable alternative.
“The Amish are fortunate to be in a state (like Wisconsin) where they have the opportunity to make their case and the state has the burden to show a least restrictive alternative,” said Charles Haynes, senior scholar at the First Amendment Center, a nonpartisan group that studies free expression issues. “That’s a big protection for a religious group.”
And what does the Constitution say about what you can do with your private land? The Constitution is gone and the SS are out is full force.
Hmm. We have a large Amish presence where I live. They all wear the blaze orange and have the triangular sign on the back of their carriages.
Problem with Indiana is that the land is much higher priced and they prefer to not pay that much for a simple family farm. Plus the incidence of tornadoes is much higher (per acre).
Still, the Mennonites have been settled in much of North central Indiana for a century and a half and have had a chance to influence the law to make the state tolerable for the Amish.
This gives them a choice ~ buy cheap and put up with Hochdutsche harassment in Wisconsin and the rest of the Upper Midwest, or pay more and be officially tolerated in Indiana.
No doubt it's a really tough choice for them ~ their money or their comfort ~ the Mark of the Beast is surely flashing before their eyes!
The problem is that, once you make one exception, it become difficult to say no to the next person who seeks an exception. If I replace the word Amish with Muslim in the story, the story takes on new meaning for me. It's like the Muslim woman in FL who wanted special dispensation to have her picture taken with her veil in place for her driver's license. It would seem that the law of the land should prevail and special exceptions should be avoided.
I think I'd wear dayglo orange supplementd with flashing lights, and a good body armor vest.
Indiana has been equally soft on Moslems, so, yeah, they have some ~ at the same time I think themore “militant” Moslems would be happier isolated on reservations in Northern Wisconsin ~ lots of empty space up there and cold as blazes in Winter. Tone them down you know.
Regardless, where is call for religious freedom? If these were muslims would they be fined? Where is a the ACLU?
Disparity of treatment happens all the time. Unless the powers that be want to make an example of a celebrity, as happened with Martha Stewart, or their antics have made them unpopular, as in the cases of Paris Hilton or Leona Helmsley, there is a double standard and they walk away from legal scrapes with little or no jail time. The same applies to politicians, especially if they are members of minority groups, e.g., Congressman William Jefferson of Louisiana.
The most important issue is not equal treatment under the law, but rather the limitation of government power so that the law interferes with property rights less frequently.
My grandmother told me that a lot of people refused to get social security cards because they thought it was the 'mark of the beast' from Revelations. I wonder how the Amish stood on that issue. This article seems to imply that the Amish interpreted the Bible passage to mean that you couldn't 'mark' your 'beasts', like cows.
They have a pretty good business going over there. The entire town is a tourist trap with buses coming daily to gawk at them and buy high priced goods. You can check out the town here.
many of those in WI are what are known as old order Amish...much more strict in their religious views...
They were going to have to drive to every Amish farm anyway because they don't have phones, typically. More evidence of a lack of awareness of what it means to be Amish and live a certain kind of simple life. Guess the WI Ag Dept. will have to write a codicil in the regs to require phones along with the registration.
I disagree, and really, so do you. You mentioned exceptions of TV celebrities and one Congressman (one of the few who wasn't smart enough not to get caught) via unequal application of the law...exactly what I said should not be done. Such exceptions are what jaundice the rest of us towards the application of the law.
It would seem to me that equal and consistent application of the law would actually reinforce your desire for the protection of private property rights. They are not mutually exclusive goals. As to Mr. Jefferson, I don't think he's dodged the bullet yet.
LOL! If those guys are hunting deer, they’re aiming waaaaaaaay too high! :)
I wondered if that was the difference.
I think the problem isn’t so much the unequal application of the law, but that there are too many damned laws on the books in the first place.
Good God, there isn’t ANY aspect of our lives now that isn’t subject to some dim-witted “code” someplace, and THAT fosters contempt for even the appropriate laws every society does need.
What I wouldn’t give for them to just leave us the hell alone...
Regards,
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