Polluters of the world! If you’re looking for a religious excuse to dump untreated sewage onto your neighbors’ properties, look no farther than the Swartzentruber Amish:
The septic fight began in late 2006 when the executive director of the Cambria County Sewage Enforcement Agency, Deborah Sedlmeyer, found that human waste at the schoolhouse, where 18 children were taught, was being collected in a 50-gallon metal drum under an outhouse
“It was overrunning the barrels,” Ms. Sedlmeyer said, and it was being dumped, untreated, onto nearby fields.
The Swartzentrubers agreed to improve the outhouses, adding a larger, 250-gallon holding tank and treating the waste with lime.
But they refused to follow state law, which called for installing a 5,000-gallon precast concrete tank and allowing someone certified by the state to use an electronic meter to test the waste’s chemical content.
The elders had determined that use of a precast tank was too modern — they want to make the vat themselves — as was the electronic meter and the requirement that they obtain certification to do the testing.
Perhaps, though, their refusal to use the color orange makes them a bit too anti-modern for your tastes. In which case why not start your own Amish sect? You’ll still get the ACLU on your side, and you can decide which laws are “too modern” and which ones aren’t.
For instance, if I were to start my own Amish sect (the “Rolltreppenbenutzungshinweise Amish”), we would probably decide that the following laws were “too modern”:
- marijuana prohibition
- speed limits
- income tax
- the DMCA
- Campaign Finance Reform
- Stimulus 2009
We’d start a farm somewhere in Pennsylvania, grow weed, drive as fast as we want, keep our income, circumvent DRM, single-handedly finance fringe political candidates, and not piss away a trillion dollars of our neighbors money.
That sounds kind of good, actually! Who’s in?
Your religion is false 