Horrible song, but I like the plan:
A FORMER marine who was raised by nuns and made a fortune selling pizza has embarked on a £230m plan to build the first town in America to be run according to strict Catholic principles.
Abortions, pornography and contraceptives will be banned in the new Florida town of Ave Maria, which has begun to take shape on former vegetable farms 90 miles northwest of Miami.
Tom Monaghan, the founder of the Domino's Pizza chain, has stirred protests from civil rights activists by declaring that Ave Maria's pharmacies will not be allowed to sell condoms or birth control pills. The town's cable television network will carry no X-rated channels. . . .
Yet civil rights activists and other watchdogs concerned about the separation of church and state are threatening lawsuits if Ave Maria attempts to enforce Catholic dogma. . . .
Monaghan has argued that the owners of the town's commercial properties will be free to impose conditions in leases – notably the restriction on the sale of contraceptives. But that has been challenged by Howard Simon, executive director of the Florida branch of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Simon said the US Supreme Court had already ruled “ownership [of a town] does not always mean absolute dominion”. “If he wants to build a town and encourage like-minded people to come and live there, that's fine. We get into problems where he tries to exercise governmental authority.”
Link.
I'm not acquainted with the jurisprudence surrounding "corporate towns," but my simple gut reaction: If you own it, you control it. No one's forcing people to live there, and if they don't like it, they don't have to go. The civil libertarians simply hate it when someone doesn't buy into their secularist vision of America, hence their simple gut reaction against the new town.
Incidentally: I don't agree with Monaghan's alleged plans to move the law school to Florida, but I don't think that's currently "in the works." I could be wrong.
