Originally Posted By: Goillini
As a mostly intellectual exercise, I've been trying to come up with an example of a religion that gets special rights based on their beliefs, as requested by Larry Brown, and I think I've come up with something close. Members of Federally recognized Native American Tribes are allowed to possess and use bald eagle feathers for religious purposes. That would be a crime for most others.

Not a perfect example, I grant you, but the best I could come up with.


That's the best I've seen anyone come up with. The difference there, however, is that the US government deals with Native Americans/Indians differently than with other ethnic groups or religions. (I prefer the "politically incorrect" term Indians. Having been born in this country and even without a drop of Indian blood as far as I know, I consider myself a "Native American".) The US government has negotiated numerous treaties with various tribes, and deals with them on some issues almost as if they were sovereign nations. They also get to use drugs which are otherwise illegal in some religiouns ceremonies. All of this, I think, is by way of our government recognizing that they were here before there was a United States government, and therefore allows them certain rights and privileges (also in the areas of hunting and fishing) that are forbidden to non-Indians. Having taken much of the land on which they freely roamed in the past--even if they didn't "possess" it in the same way we possess property--I think we bend over backwards in allowing them to retain those aspects of their culture. It's also a reaction to past govt practices of essentially trying to eliminate their cultures and languages, and turn them into . . . us, I guess. For example, the former policy was to forbid them to use their native languages if they attended a government Indian school. Now they're encouraged to retain their native tongues.

But we don't seem to make the same accommodations to ethnic groups or religions that have been brought here by more recent immigrants. For example, our Hmong allies in Southeast Asia were used to hunting, fishing and gathering with essentially no regulations. We had to do some educating to get them to follow American laws in those areas.

Last edited by L. Brown; 06/01/16 05:41 PM.