[Vision2020] Complaints Filed Against Boarding Houses

[Joan Opyr]

On Apr 13, 2006, at 9:59 AM, kerry becker wrote:

> "What other group is doing it??" 
>
>  Why don't you take your camera and find out?  If you are not biased, 
> then I would hope you would extend your research for all Moscow 
> residents.
>

Here's a question for you, Kerry Becker: why should she?  Why should 
anyone?  Why should ordinary citizens be placed in the awkward position 
of compelling the City of Moscow to enforce its own zoning laws?  We 
have city administrators who are paid hefty salaries to ensure that the 
law, as written, is enforced without prejudice.  At present, the law is 
not enforced against members of the Wilson Church.  It is enforced 
against others.  Why is this?  Is it because the city staff fear the 
empty cries of religious persecution?  Or is it because they're tapped 
out in the brains department?  No one can or should care what god you 
worship or what church you attend when you break the law, but in the 
City of Moscow, we do care.  New St. Andrews is a serial zoning 
violator.  Why is it located in the Central Business District, contrary 
to zoning ordinance and contrary to the Comprehensive Plan, without 
penalty?  The law has been changed by the Moscow City Council so that 
Doug's school can stay in its present location.  How, exactly, is that 
persecution?  It looks to me like a hell of a big favor.

The Unitarian Universalist Church has been advised by the city that 
they cannot expand at their present location.  I would suggest that 
they go ahead and expand anyway.  They should thumb their collective 
noses at the city and begin building.  Once they're done, they can say, 
echoing Doug Wilson's logic, "We're here.  We've spent a lot of money.  
We're great neighbors.  Why are you persecuting us?  It's because we're 
liberal, isn't it?  It's because you hate our open theology."  Tell me: 
do you think that would work?  No, me neither.  The UUs are law 
abiding.  They actually care about secular government.

Finally, why should anyone feel obliged to demonstrate to you or Robert 
Sentz or Doug Wilson that they are "without bias" before taking action 
against yet another flagrant violation of the law?  You ask "what other 
group is doing it?"  I'll toss this question right back at you.  What 
other group has persistently, repeatedly, and openly flouted the law in 
the way that Christ Church has done?  Have the Catholics or the Mormons 
or the Presbyterians established an educational institution in the 
Central Business District?  Have the Lutherans claimed tax exemptions 
to which they were not legally entitled?  Have the Baptists (Southern, 
Free Will, or American) organized multi-student boarding houses in R-1 
residential zones AFTER having been told by the city more than 6 years 
ago that said boarding houses are not allowed and are not legal?  The 
answer is no; none of these other religious groups have done this, and 
I have to say that the Jews and the Muslims, the Methodists and the 
Wiccans, all seem to have been behaving themselves as well.

I don't know Diane Baumgart, the woman who filed the petition against 
these boarding houses, gathering more than forty non-Huskey signatures 
in the process.  I admire her courage and her fortitude, though, 
because she's about to be hit with the water cannon of Doug Wilson's 
ready lachrymosa.  It'll be boo-hoo, poor us, while the serrated edges 
fly and the snotty, offensive  "good soldier" cracks flare.  Lost in it 
all will be the fact that no one should pay good money for a 
single-family house in an R-1 zone only to find that an illegal student 
flop house has sprung up next door.  No one should have to put up with 
her quiet, peaceful street being turned into the site of a borstal: 
cars everywhere, no ready parking, students driving up over one's lawn, 
tossing trash onto the grass, coming and going at all hours, and making 
the sort of racket that only a group of 18-21 year olds can make.

(And, please, don't give me a load of old rubbish about how we're not 
talking about ordinary students here but good Christian kids with nice 
haircuts and Wally Cleaver sweater vests.  If you do, I'll be obliged 
to publish an annotated list of all the lovely preachers' daughters I 
dated back in the day.  Those Southern girls can sure put away the 
bourbon.)

Here is the world according to Doug Wilson and NDW, the hot air 
apparent:

1. Christ Church does not respect secular law.
2. Christ Church breaks secular law all the time.
3. Christ Church is a law unto itself.
3. If we "infidels" insist on the enforcement of secular law, this will 
be treated as a form of religious persecution.  Unless, of course, we 
can find a Zoroastrian or a Hindu or a Buddhist to punish for doing 
exactly same thing as the Christ Church culprit.

Imagine if law enforcement had to follow the Wilson model in all its 
actions.  We couldn't prosecute a Baptist DUI until we could pair the 
culprit with a drunk-driving Methodist.  Speaking of which, do you know 
the difference between a Baptist and a Methodist?  A Methodist will say 
hi when he meets you in the liquor store.

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment
www.joanopyr.com

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