Holy Pizzaville, Batman! Florida may get a Heaven's-Gated Community
Agence-Vleeptron Presse presents The Associated Press's traditional objective, unbiased take on this story.
Then A-VP follows that with Another Take on this story. We'll try to scare up Fox News Channel's Fair and Balanced take on this story if they have their own.
Okay, maybe the guy's right: Maybe history is a struggle between Good And Evil.
But ... uhhh ... will Good finally triumph over Evil thanks to a pizza chain billionaire's real estate development?
That's about as unexpected as the Danish Cartoon Riots, but Vleeptron didn't see that one coming, either.
Notice that Holy Pizzaville ain't gonna sell condoms or birth-control pills.
When Monaghan owned Domino's, he was one of the USA's biggest $$$ contributors to fight legal abortion. Vleeptron's hazy memory recalls that there was a big Pro-Choice boycott against Domino's as a result, and Monaghan sold it. Pretty sure Domino's is no longer linked to the Pro-Life movement, you can order the pepperoni and anchovies and tell them to hold the Pro-Life contribution.
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The Associated Press
Sunday 5 March 2006
Clash ensues
over plans for town
Plans for a new town near Naples
are creating a controversy
over citizens' rights as it aims
to operate under Catholic beliefs.
by BRIAN SKOLOFF, Associated Press
WEST PALM BEACH -- If Domino's Pizza founder Thomas S. Monaghan has his way, a new town being built near Naples will be governed according to strict Roman Catholic principles, with no place to get an abortion, pornography or birth control.
But his ideas about barring pornography and birth control, Monaghan said, apply only to the Catholic university that the town is being built around.
"There are a lot of misconceptions," he said Friday.
Both the town of Ave Maria and its Ave Maria University, the first Catholic university to be built in the United States in four decades, are set to open next year about 25 miles east of Naples.
Monaghan's comments Friday contrasted with statements he made last year to a Catholic men's group in Boston that pornographic magazines won't be sold in town, pharmacies won't carry condoms or birth control pills and cable television will not carry X-rated channels.
"I would say I just misspoke," Monaghan said in an interview with The Associated Press. "The town will be open to anybody."
Monaghan had declined to comment earlier in the week, while his attorneys were reviewing legal issues surrounding his original ideas.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida had promised lawsuits if the proposals were instituted. Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist said he saw nothing in Monaghan's proposals that violated state law.
The town is being developed through a 50-50 partnership with the Barron Collier Co., an agricultural and real estate firm based in Naples. Barron Collier and Monaghan will control all commercial real estate.
The town will not allow adult bookstores or topless clubs.
However, it will merely suggest, not prohibit, businesses from selling adult magazines or contraceptives.
"We are not going to censor any of that information, but in deference to Ave Maria University, we are going to request that they not sell that merchandise. But we are not restricting," said Paul Marinelli, Barron Collier's chief executive officer.
"The misconception we're trying to clarify is that this is not going to be a strictly Catholic town."
He said the town would welcome "synagogues as well as Baptist churches."
Also contrary to Monaghan's earlier statements, the town will not restrict cable television programming.
Marinelli said the town, expected to attract 25,000 residents, will include seven different communities for groups from seniors to families.
"We're just trying to create an environment where children will be safe on the streets, where they can ride their bikes and play ball in the park," he said. "We're truly just trying to create a town with traditional values," he said.
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WDC MEDIA NEWS
Christian News and Media Agency
Monday 6 March 2006
Florida Town to Ban Abortion,
Contraception, Pornography
by Terry Vanderheyden -- Lifesitenews.com
(LifeSiteNews.com) -- A proposed town to be built in southwest Florida will ban abortion and contraception, said its developer and visionary, Thomas S. Monaghan.
Monaghan, the founder of America’s second-largest pizza chain, Domino’s Pizza, said his proposed town will not allow abortion. Pharmacies there would also not sell the so-called birth-control pill or condoms, and television stations will not carry pornography.
The town, situated on 5,000 acres 30 miles east of Naples is called Ave Maria -- also the name of a University founded by Monaghan, currently half way through a full transfer to Naples from it founding location in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The town, which had its official ground-breaking last week, is being constructed around a massive cathedral with a 100-foot spire and a 65-foot crucifix. The plan is to have 11,000 homes ready for occupation by next year.
Monaghan told Newsweek magazine Monday, "I believe all of history is just one big battle between good and evil. I don’t want to be on the sidelines."
The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida has already begun to plan their attack against the venture. "It is completely naive to think this first attempt [to restrict access to contraception] will be their last," said ACLU executive director Howard Simon. "If they attempt to do what he apparently wants to do, the people of Naples and Collier County, Florida, are in for a whole series of legal and constitutional problems and a lot of litigation indefinitely into the future," he added, according to an AP report. Newsweek said Planned Parenthood is also keeping an eye on the project.
Naples Community Hospital said it plans to operate a university clinic in the new town, but did not promise to completely restrict contraceptive prescriptions. Hospital spokesman Edgardo Tenreiro said it is unlikely they would prescribe them for students, but for the general public, probably. "For the general public, the answer is probably yes, but not definitely yes," he said.
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posted by Vleeptron Dude | 12:59
3 Comments:
I don't think Thomas Morus had this in mind when he wrote "Utopia".
No comments from Vleeptron on the South Dakota thing yet. Hm. I thought you'd go stark raving mad.
I'm ignoring the South Dakota thing -- not because I can't get pregnant, but because it's (choose one)
1. entirely symbolic -- that is, it won't really forbid a single abortion, or
2. it's a US Constitutional Crisis that will take anywhere from 4 to 7 years to actually become a Crisis and bother any American women, including those in South Dakota.
When's the last time something in Lichtenstein ever actually bothered you? South Dakota is sort of like our Lichtenstein. There are almost no people in South Dakota. It's one of the least populous states in the USA. It's pretty much all farms, with a few farmers to run the big wheat harvesting machines.
Immediately, if the SD police try to prevent an abortion (the law would try to arrest the doctor), Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union and many other groups would file a motion in federal court claiming the SD law was unconstitutional, and while the challenge moved up the chain of federal courts, the law would be "on hold" and would not be enforced by order of the federal courts.
Only years from now, if/when the challenge gets to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court upholds the SD law, will there be actual trouble for any American women.
There are so few people in SD that the legislature only meets part-time, for a few weeks every year. The lawmakers stay in hotels in the capital, Pierre (pronounced PEER).
The purpose of the SD law is not to change things in SD. It's to get approved years from now in the US Supreme Court so that conservative state legislatures in other states can then pass similar laws.
Until then, it's pretty much entirely symbolic. Even if it temporarily bans abortion in SD, any woman/girl can get on a bus and travel to a nearby state without such a ban -- in other words, a state that still follows the old Supreme Court pro-Choice decision called Roe v. Wade.
Like Irish women who take the ferry from Dublin to Hollyhead (Wales), and then take the train to London to get an abortion, and then go home.
The anti-abortion politicians are all hoping that Bush's 2 new Supreme Court judges -- and Bush may get a chance to replace a 3rd judge before he leaves office -- will "tilt" the court sufficiently to the right to overturn Roe v. Wade.
That possibility is a long time in the future. And there are a lot of women in the USA who are starting to organize to put pressure on the national political process. If, 4 years from now, abortion is threatened, the millions of women who want to keep abortion a legal right will be ready to threaten any elected state or federal lawmaker with election defeat if he (or she) tries to pass a state or federal abortion ban law. I think that threat -- throwing these creeps out of their jobs -- will preserve the right to abortion.
Conservative or liberal, you have no idea how desperately US or state elected legislators want to keep their sweet cushy jobs forever. Very, very few elected politicians will commit noble political suicide over this issue. They'll vote to save their jobs, and tell the TV camera: "I listened to my constituents, and voted to do their will, even though I have always opposed abortion."
I'm happy about American politics rather than outraged this week. I just watched a big prestigious panel in New York City talking about impeaching Bush. Fancy, important people, not weirdos, hippies, outsiders.
Bush has been doing things -- the secret, unconstitutional wiretaps, and approving the United Arab Emirates to take control of 6 big East Coast seaports -- which have been outraging senior politicians in his own Republican party. Public support for the Iraq war has slid to the levels of public support for Nixon's Vietnam war, and that's also spread across the right-left political spectrum now. And the corruption scandals are also spreading upwards.
Clinton survived his blow-job impeachment and finished out his 8-year term.
Nostrabobus thinks Bush won't make it to the end of his 8 years. He's doing incredibly self-destructive political things. For the first time, Impeaching Bush is no longer a whacky crazy idea. I think he'll be removed from office. And the political pendulum will swing back to the left, a bit more liberal, a bit more calm, a bit less paranoid.
[sound of Bob swatting gnats mosquitos & flies]
is this evidence that spambots have learned how to read and auto-type the squiggly word verification letters? that's Very Clever.
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