Treating sewage before dumping it is against my religion
You can’t go a day without reading more news about religiously inspired idiocy. Today, it’s the Amish’s turn (go Amish!). Members of an Amish community in Pennsylvania are facing fines and possible jail time because they don’t want to use 20th-century innovations in sanitation — which have long since been mandated by law, seeing as how it’s in the public good and all. Normally I don’t mind silly religious beliefs so long as they aren’t causing harm to anyone, but when we’re talking about exposure to raw sewage, then yeah, I mind.
The Amish abhor technology (though only the technology that’s been invented since the Amish sect formed; anything from before then, including remarkably sophisticated building construction using wood, is okay somehow). So it should come as no surprise when they refuse to use technology like sanitary plumbing or septic tanks. No, this group of Amish is just dumping the contents of their outhouses directly onto their land. This is understandably worrying to their neighbors, most of whom draw their water from groundwater wells. The dangers of spreading diseases through fecal contamination of drinking water are well established and have been mitigated for over a century now through proper sanitation. The Amish don’t deserve a free pass on this one just because of their nonsensical religious beliefs. My empathies are entirely with the neighbors dealing with piles of untreated sewage sitting atop adjacent land (and I suspect yours are too).
Now the vast majority of the people reading this blog are going to agree with me here, and say that it is perfectly acceptable for Pennsylvania (like all other states, I would imagine) to have a law prohibiting the discharge of raw sewage onto land and requiring the use of either sanitary plumbing or containing devices such as septic tanks. But some idiots who are so enamored of religion and silly beliefs might try to claim that this law is unconstitutional, that it violates the First Amendment by persecuting religious beliefs. Not so. Let’s analyze the legislation using the Lemon Test, a three-pronged approach to determining if a law is constitutional within the framework of the First Amendment:
- The government’s action must have a legitimate secular purpose. I would argue that prohibiting the discharge of raw sewage unquestionably serves a secular purpose, and it serves the benefit of the public good more strongly than at least 99.9% of all laws. This law is a model law, the kind of law you can point to and say unequivocally that the government is, at least in this instance, doing a good job, and that there is some rationale to justify that having a government is a good idea.
- The government’s action must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion. Seeing as how the law references only the treatment of sewage and has nothing to do with religion whatsoever, it trivially passes this prong of the Lemon Test. In other words, it’s the religions fault for requiring something conflicting the law, not the law’s fault for inhibiting religion.
- The government’s action must not result in an “excessive government entanglement” with religion. There is no entanglement here whatsoever. The law requires of everyone equally that they properly handle their sewage, no matter what religion they happen to be. The two issues are orthogonal.
Now admittedly this is kind of a silly application of the Lemon Test because this law is so obviously in the right and the Amish are so obviously in the wrong, but I just wanted some cold evidence to back up my conclusion. The Amish are guilty of violating a law with a strong secular purpose, and they should be fined, or jailed if necessary, if they do not comply with it. Jail is not too harsh of a penalty; we are talking about groundwater contamination by fecal-borne diseases here. Society revolves around the simple maxim of being good neighbors, and exposing your neighbors to raw sewage, regardless of any wacko religious beliefs, makes you a bad one.
One final point: At this point everyone is nodding along with me, echoing thoughts of “Oh those silly Amish and their untreated sewage”. But that’s only because the religious belief in question is so far out there. What about more “mainstream” religious beliefs that, although they aren’t as crazy on their face, are followed and considered acceptable by a much larger number of people, and thus their aggregate harm to society is much greater? I’m looking at you, Christianity, and your frequent hatred of gays (causing bullying and sometimes murder), abhorrence of birth control in favor of a failed “abstinence only” policy (resulting in teen pregnancies and spread of STDs), encroachment of religious values into secular life, etc. And I’m not even going to bother mentioning Islam, as there’s too much to cover. It’s easy to make fun of the Amish. It’s much harder to turn your focus inwards and realize all of the flaws in your own beliefs. Just as the Amish’s harmful beliefs, lacking any basis in reason as they do, look silly and dangerous to you, so too do your own harmful beliefs, just as lacking in any basis in reason, look silly and dangerous to us.
Incidentally, I was going to use a picture of untreated sewage to illustrate this blog post, then wisely thought better of it at the last moment before publishing.
February 18th, 2008 at 01:28
The sad thing is that even though this seems that the sewage-treatment mandate should “obviously” prevail, I don’t trust the triumph of reason/rationality in this country anymore, even when religious beliefs cause direct physical harm to others.
February 18th, 2008 at 11:51
Using human waste as fertilizer contaminates their neighbors’ ground water supplies? That sounds unlikely, considering how much cow and pig manure is used today on mega-farms. The news article doesn’t seem to indicate that there *are* any major water quality issues. And outhouses still exist on *normal* farms; I’ve used them before.
I know that the article says it’s their religious beliefs, but I would say that it’s perhaps more complicated than that. The Amish generally want to remain self-sufficient and disconnected from the outside world, which is why you’ll see Amish who live in fairly modern houses with propane tanks out back, but don’t have electricity from the grid. Likewise, some Amish have actually started using cell phones. Much of their money comes from sales of hand-crafted goods like furniture; I think they were fairly disappointed when the state stopped accepting tax payments in kind. There are even Wal-Marts in Ohio with hitching posts for the Amish families who live nearby.
The Amish have admirably strong communities because they act so deliberately to preserve them, and there’s a lot that can be learned from them. If you want to go after them, there are much easier targets, like how their insular breeding patterns have led to the emergence of really rare genetic diseases, or how their communities hide abuse when it happens. But don’t take some overgeneralizing local TV news article and use it to make them out to be fools.
February 18th, 2008 at 14:04
A couple points:
Nothing in the article indicates that they were using the human waste as fertilizer. That’s another unjustified assumption just like my assumption that they were causing groundwater contamination. But regardless of what the waste was being used for, I think the neighbors have a right not to be exposed to it. It’s an eyesore (and I bet it doesn’t smell good either). Maybe if the Amish didn’t have non-Amish neighbors nobody would care, but they do, so they have to conform with the law the same as everyone else.
I don’t see how using cell phones makes them self-sufficient. Cell phones depend on cell networks just like normal telephones depend on telephone cables. Even wind-up walkie-talkies wouldn’t be self-sufficient because they don’t have the technology to create them themselves. Being self-sufficient means not depending on anyone else for anything — if you’re using a lot of technology that you can’t manufacture yourself, you’re not self-sufficient. Most of their other practices are self-sufficient; they do all their own farming, make all their own tools, clothing, buildings, breed their own horses, etc., so it’s weird to see them going down this road.
And I don’t particularly see the value of strong preservation just for the sake of preservation. I think modern societies are doing more for humanity than the Amish ever did, or will. They’re a technological dead end, a curiosity. If everyone had been like the Amish we wouldn’t have any of the things we currently take for granted, including the computers that provide employment for you and I.
February 18th, 2008 at 15:40
+1: Informative
Here’s another article with a bit more detail. Basically, the problem isn’t outhouses per se, but rather how the waste is disposed of.
That, and failure to obtain building permits, aka the Kent Hovind Memorial Offense.
February 18th, 2008 at 17:07
Thanks for the article Andrew. And yeah, it’s the same tired “We’re religious so we don’t have to follow the law” bullshit again.
This was by far the best part of that article:
February 19th, 2008 at 14:24
The Amish are a constant reminder of how easy it is to look back at “the good old days” and become nostalgic. What people forget is that as a modern citizen:
1. I’ve drank better wine than any King of France pre-Antoinette (for far less money)
2. I live in a society that accepts any creed, culture or ethnicity.
3. I am almost 10 times as likely to achieve a degree of Bachelors or above than my grandparents were
4. I have easy access to food, water and all other basic needs at an incredibly nominal price
5. The internet exists so I am never bored
6. Strawberries are available year round for under 10 dollars
…the list goes on. Of course anytime you watch a “period” movie there is a part of you that wants to live in 1776 or some other far off time. That is the idea of nostalgia, the movie makes it look simpler and more fulfilling to be a member of the 18th century. However, any reasonably logical person should realize that they are probably much better off living in 2008 than any other time before.
The Amish’s extreme nostalgia for…1840 I am guessing is severely inhibiting their ability to exist. That is sad.
There is a book I recommend about this kind of nostalgia called the Progress Paradox, by Gregg Easterbrook. Great book.
February 19th, 2008 at 18:38
In general –
I never said that I wanted to live an Amish lifestyle any more than I wanted to live an ascetic Buddhist monk lifestyle after I stayed with them in Japan. But there is much more to life than the quality of goods. As Thoreau said, “I went into the woods to live deliberately,” and I believe that this is what the Amish (in general) are doing. Amish youth have the chance to go live in the outside world during their rumspringa period, and they make an educated choice about what kind of life to lead.
However, in this particular case, after reading the longer article, I can say that it isn’t even worth criticizing what is, effectively, a small sect even within the Amish community. These people won’t even attach the near-ubiquitous orange triangles to their horse buggies.
February 19th, 2008 at 20:25
I’ve found that the great thing about a modern lifestyle is all of the things it allows us to take for granted (I have a draft saved on this blog on the very topic). Food, shelter, health care in many countries except ours and the third world — when you don’t have to worry about these things, you can devote your entire attention to much more important matters. The greatest invention in the history of science was agriculture, because it allowed societies to evolve in which some of the people produced enough to feed all of the people, thus freeing the rest of the people up to focus on more important things, like science and industry.
Living like the Amish, or in some regards the Buddhist monks, would be deliberately going against the most important historical trend humanity has ever witnessed. I cannot fathom it. I’m glad you wouldn’t do it, but unlike you, I don’t even admire it in any sense. I look at those people and don’t think “that’s cool”; I look at them and pity them. Imagine all of those man-years wasted away by monks, contributing nothing in the grand scheme of things. Meditating may yield weird changes in individuals’ brain chemistry, but it doesn’t reveal any greater truths. You need science for that. I see throwing your life away meditating while not contributing anything to society as nearly equivalent to someone throwing their life away on drugs.
In May, the Large Hadron Collider, by far the largest supercollider ever, will come online. It represents the efforts of tens of thousands of scientists and the input of billions of dollars. It will shed new light on fundamental physical truths of the universe, likely revealing new fundamental particles, and it may either confirm or shatter the Standard Model of physics. It is revolutionary in all possible meanings of the word. And people like the Amish or Buddhist monks will have had nothing whatsoever to do with it.