I don't get the problem

FOXNews.com - Amish Homeowners Argue Religion Trumps Building Codes :

"'They just go ahead and don't listen to any of the laws that are affecting anybody else. It's quite a problem when you got people next door required to get permits and the Amish don't have to get them,' said Gary Olson, a county supervisor in central Wisconsin's Jackson County, where Borntreger lives"

Oh its the "But I Can't Do That" statute they are using .... oh.

"The cases have sparked local debates about where religion ends and government begins. Amish advocates — the Amish religion precludes them from defending themselves physically or legally — argue the Amish belief that they must live apart from the world trumps local regulations."

You know what? This is more of a case to see how far being a bully can go ... well what would you call it when they know that the Amish won't defend themselves in any way?

These people are just being bullied.

Yes there are building codes, but some of them are totally unreasonable .... the Amish do not believe in electricity - the city code says they HAVE TO have electricity ... because they do not have electricity, they of course can not have a hardwired smoke detector .... I do not know about indoor plumbing, but electricity is needed to work a pump to carry waste water to the septic system so chances are they don't have that either .... they don't believe in phones, but I'm sure if you check regulations you will find that all residences need to have a phone line connected with the minimum of 911 service.

I would be more interested in why these people seem to be getting singled out for these suits ... there just seems to be an unprecedented amount of them recently.

The Amish bother no one ... they are peaceful people ... I think this quote may just hold the truth of the matter:

" The Amish population has nearly doubled in the U.S. over the last 15 years, growing to 227,000 this year, according to estimates from Elizabethtown College's Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. As the Amish look for new farmland, conservative congregations have migrated into states that haven't seen them before, said Karen Johnson-Weiner, an Amish expert at the State University of New York at Potsdam."

And that just about sums it up ... people don't like them because they are different than they be.

I think too that a good chunk of it has to do with money issues of cities, counties, states and they look at the Amish who don't pay taxes and they just try to figure a way of getting it.

Wonder what would happen if these were Muslims -- you see Muslims don't believe in paying for what you didn't earn ... so they don't pay interest, they don't pay taxes (at least not the ones I've ran into) because its against their religions.

We can't have 'freedom of religion' and then pick & chose which religions this applies to and which it doesn't not ... otherwise there are an awful lot of Jewish households and churches which need to get busted for serving liquor to minors for giving them wine during religious services.

Nope -- its an ALL or NOTHING type of deal.