Ci… I mean I don’t think I can agree with that. I agree how judges rule in alimony and custody cases are slanted but that doesn’t mean that the laws themselves are written that way. Maybe they’re some are written that way that you can show us.
In Canada, “Status Indians,” meaning people who have legal status as members of an aboriginal group, are treated very differently from other Canadians under the law. Work performed on reserves by status Indians is not subject to any tax, and they have the right to not pay sales tax on purchases. They also receive free education benefits not available to other Canadians. As well, Indian reservations are subject to different forms of law in some ways, and an entire ministry of the federal government is alrgely given over to relations with the aboriginal population (including maintaining an Indian Register - a great big list of who’s an Indian.) There are a variety of other little legal differences as well; it’d take months to explain it all.
Until 1960, Indians could not vote, either, but that at least is past.
I don’t think Status Indians quite fit the OP. This isn’t a case where the laws favour Indians just for being Indian - it’s a case where there are certain treaty obligations that are owed to people related in specific ways to members of tribes at the time of the signings. You can theoretically have 100% aboriginal ancestry but not be a Status Indian and hence not enjoy any special legal status whatsoever.
In England (yes, i mean England specifically not the U.K. as a whole), there are four groups of people ineligible to serve in the House of Commons: the nobility, convicted felons, the insane, and ministers of the Church of England. 
(This may have changed in very recent years.)
In North Carolina, universal male suffrage was in place from 1867 until 1898, at which point the franchise was removed from illiterates, except those who had voted or who had an ancestor who voted prior to 1867. Oddly enough, this had the effect of disenfranchising most Blacks as well as many poor whites, while continuing to extend the franchise to “reliable” illiterate whites who could be counted on to vote Democratic – the effect intended by the writers of the law.
In British Columbia, Manitoba, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and India, Sikh’s are exempt from wearing helmets on motorcycles; everyone else must wear one.
I’m not sure if it’s a state law or city or what, but around here you pay 1% less sales tax if you’re over a certain age.
On the convicted felons point, it’s only people who are sentenced to a least a year in prison who are ineligible. And they are only ineligible while serving their sentence.
We can add to your list: people under 21, bankrupts, aliens, and members of the civil service, armed forces and police.
Is this a US thing? In England and Wales at least, they’re heavily slanted towards children.
Until recently, the standard here in the US was that the mother automatically got custody of children, unless the father could prove some kind of malfeasance on the mother’s part. Even today, it often appears that fathers get short shrift. From what I’ve seen in the local Family Courts, whether someone had a private attorney mattered far more, but in either case, facts or the best interests of the child often seem to end up in the gutters somewhere.
About ten years ago, now, there’d been a lovely pissing match between a Family Court judge up here and one down in Florida. IIRC the arrangement began as a shared custody arrangement that had been heavily modified and adjusted after the mother’s boyfriend of the time kidnapped the couple’s two daughters, raped and cut both their throats. The older girl survived.
For some silly, inconsequential reason the surviving girl didn’t want to continue her visitations with her mother. Something about not feeling safe with her, AIUI. The Florida court refused to hear the then 15-18 yo’s (This battle went on for years, btw.) statements about her wishes, since he had set up a shared custody arrangement, and by gum they were going to follow that, in the best interests of the child! At least that was his reasoning about the whole mess. It ended up with bench warrants being issued in one court, vacated in another, and really only ended because the girl grew old enough to have the firm legal right tell the Florida judge that maybe, just maybe, the girl might have reason to not feel safe with the idea of visiting her mother.
Here’s a NYT article outlining the case, with details you should trust over my fallible memory. Read it and ask yourself if it shows a Family Court system that’s looking out for the best interests of the children.
New York City building codes prohibit having more than one kitchen in the same dwelling except for religious reasons - effectively favoring kosher-keeping Jews over other groups, if only through exemption. (Both kitchens have to be kosher certified to get one.)
What’s the big whoop about kitchens? You might be turning a one-family home/apt into a two-family, which is a big zoning no-no.
New Jersey has the same thing, unless the second kitchen is in the basement. Then it passes as a “summer kitchen.” RAther strange, as basement apartments are illegal.
Back in the day, cooking in the basement in summertime helped the upstairs stay merely uncomfortable, instead of unbearable.
Without knowing about exemptions, though, who knows whether the code is meant to favor any group.
Summer kitchen ordinances probably favor(ed) people with the money to build and maintain them.
NYC’s ordinance actually doesn’t let any group off the hook, because even kosher keeping households have to get the cert. But it is a case of a governmental entity requiring sanction from a religious entity before a third party can do something. Then again, is anybody but a hardcore atheist really gonna object to kicking a few extra bucks to a rabbi?
I appreciate the attempt to answer this in a GQ fashion, and the responses have been interesting. However, I think the vast majority if not all of these laws are considered reasonable in the time and place they are enacted. Each law could have its own IMHO or GD thread devoted to its reasonableness.
Even something as blatant as not allowing women to drive in Saudi Arabia has its rationale in preserving their society. To make a list of other countries’ laws and say they are unreasonable by the standards of the U.S. (or E.U. or some other society or a consensus of Dopers) strikes me as a bit odd. They could certainly do the same about us. How do you exclude reasonable laws? Do you look for laws with any rationale, or just a rationale you agree with?
Gay people can marry any single adult person of their choice. They are just not allowed to marry someone of the same sex.
Total commited legal relationship with someone of the same sex = bad. :mad:
Total fraudulent marriage with someone of opposite sex = good. 
Thailand’s law banning foreigners from owning land here irks me some, because wealthy Thais can and do buy up land in the US and in other countries. They squawk loud and long whenever they run into the same sort of restrictions elsewhere that they impose on foreigners here.
On the other hand, it’s been reported recently, and I even started a thread on it, that most land in Cambodia is now in foreign ownership, which really is causing some problems, so maybe Thailand’s law is not completely unreasonable. Still, it would be nice to own some land. Right now, everything has to be in the wife’s name.
And it’s only recently that Thai wives of foreigners can own land in Thailand. I remember when a Thai woman who married a foreigner lost the right to vote and to own land, except for a small plot big enough for a house that could be passed down to her as an inheritance. She had to sell any extra land upon marriage or have it confiscated by the government. Also, the children of any such union were denied Thai citizenship and could not attend the local school system. Note that all of this was only for women who married foreigners; men marrrying foreign women never lost any of these rights and privileges. All of this has changed now, though, and Thai women are no longer subjected to it. And the children are now considered Thai and can attend local school [although if the parents have any money at all – and farangs (Westerners) usually do – they avoid that and put them in private schools.]
Isn’t there a law in Mexico making it illegal to hire a non Mexican, if a Mexican applies for the job?
It’s still illegal to belong to the Communist party in Massachusetts…
But that’s irrelevant when it comes to clergy, except in the eyes of some religions. There’s nothing about being a woman that disqualifies one from being an Muslim imam, Catholic priest or Orthodox rabbi, except for the rules or traditions of those faiths.
Well, if we accept your conditions, the thread should be closed now. There are no laws that are not subjectively reasonable to the people who enact them, so we can just end the discussion here.