Courts exempt religious minorities whose values echo mainstream culture

Evidence

The opinions in the Yoder case, as some have pointed out, can be reconciled with some quite conservative features of American culture. The Amish are intensely religious, rural, old-​fashioned people. Their values do not offend the majority; in some ways they are merely extreme forms of values that the dominant culture at least ostensibly admires. Could the same have been said about the Mormons? Polygamy itself was a Biblical prac­ tice, after all. But its overtones of lust and profligate behavior, even though perhaps unfair, were too much for a nineteenth-​century court to swallow. — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law, 1423

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The law tolerates religious plural marriage only until it harms minors — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 1426; A judicial system can apply one restriction to minorities while exempting the majority — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 256; Racializing religion serves the political purpose of excluding targeted minorities (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• A judicial system can apply one restriction to minorities while exempting the majority #expands (0.85) — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist Ideology, 256
• Religious minorities’ rights assertions affirm rather than threaten American institutions #corroborates (0.80) — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 285
• Racializing religion serves the political purpose of excluding targeted minorities #qualifies (0.75)
• Courts treated ordinary Muslim religiosity as evidence of terrorist predisposition #contradicts (0.72) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 574