He was not himself a polygamist. During the Senate hearings to determine if he should be seated or not, one of the other Senators supposedly remarked in Smoot’s favor that he would rather serve with a polygamist who didn’t polyg than a monogamist who didn’t monog.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/reed-smoot-hearings?lang=eng

FWIW, the charges against Smoot sound an awful lot like the ones against Republicans today: claims, allegations, news reports in place of evidence, and guilt by association.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_Smoot

This is a significant comment which caught my attention. I’ll focus on the first part.

When I was the president of an activist group at Cornell I became pretty good friends with our faculty advisor who taught in the Government department aka Political Science at other universities.

I audited some of his lectures on Constitutional Law. I still recall one lecture in which he discussed Utah Territory becoming a state in 1896. How the federal government said “you can’t become a state unless you outlaw polygamy”.

His point (as I recall him explaining) is that freedom of religion is not absolute. Surely the people of Utah could have said “hey our religion says we can do this First Amendment right?” And the United States government said “no, we don’t care, polygamy’s icky”. Which established a precedent some will favor and say “well of course” and some will say “hey wait a minute”.

That theoretically and in practice there can be such widespread disapproval of a practice that even if a group says “hey no fair our religion says we can do this” the United States federal government can say “too bad, that’s beyond the pale”.

I appreciate Neo addressing whether we’re dealing with the “moral equivalent of racism”. Mac rightly points out that (certainly in practice) limits have been placed on the free exercise of religion. We can’t escape the question of who draws the line and where.

“Racism is specifically prohibited in governmental activity by the Constitution, as amended.”

Yes, but if your Superintendent of Schools is Cornell West or Joy Reid the library and what is considered mainstream racial doctrine will look different than if the Superintendent is David Duke.

I meant my 80% homosexual parent analogy as a thought experiment. I agree it’s extremely unlikely due to biology. However, there are likely progressive school districts were a large majority of parents want the library to contain books featuring children raised in same sex households.

I believe we are up to 18 states now that allow school choice and parents can take the dollars allocated to their children’s public school education and transfer those dollars to a private school. I believe we are nearing a tipping point.

It’s not too difficult to imagine Veganism, or at least not killing and eating animals, becoming morally dominant in the future. It’s been the case in India for a long time. It’s religiously based in India, but also cultural.

So, if a public school district in the U.S. serves 80%, or so, of families who are Vegan the cafeteria should serve Vegan meals. If 80% of the families are Hasidic Jews don’t serve shellfish or mix meat and dairy, etc…

It’s not up to a public school to determine what is religiously moral, or anticipate what will be moral decades or centuries hence. It’s up to a public school to serve the public it serves. That can never happen 100% of the time (insert Abe Lincoln quote here), but when there are clear majorities adapt curriculum.