I remember when I was a kid, someone in my family had a farm near a small town with one tiny grocery store (at which you could get gas), one tiny liquor store (at which you could get gassed) and one tiny church (at which you could … well, whatever). One day I was at the grocery store with my brother in law, and as he was checking out he said to the guy at the cash register “I’d love to get a couple of bottles of scotch.” The store’s owner, who was also the head of the local John Birch Society (but that’s another story) said, “Sure, I’ll meet you up the street.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
So we walked out of the store with our groceries, got in the car and drove up to the liquor store which at this point I noticed was closed, and the grocery store owner who was just taking our money at the cash register followed us in his car. We all got out, went into the liquor store, and my b-i-l bought his scotch. Which as I recall was very important to him.<\/p>\n
On the way back to the farm, confused, having just discovered yet another way in which life didn’t work exactly as I would have expected, I asked “Why did we just …”<\/p>\n
“… buy our bread in one store and our booze in another, from the same guy?” my brother in law helpfully interrupter.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, that. Why?”<\/p>\n
Because of the stupid church.<\/p>\n
You see, the church I mentioned above was almost right next to the grocery store, and the grocery store was located where it was for it’s own reasons, and when the owner of the grocery store decided to see if he could either sell liquor in his store or open up a liquor store nearby, he ran into a little problem: In that county and that state at that time, you could not open up a liquor store within a certain distance of a church. Something about one kind of spirit not getting along with another kind of spirit, I suppose.<\/p>\n
And that is true in many places in the US, especially in older communities. If you want to sell spirits in a liquor store or a restaurant, you have to be a certain distance from a church. This is clearly a case of a lack of separation of church and state. A civil regulation includes a requirement dictated by physical aspects of a prestigious organization. <\/p>\n
Shockingly, the progressive modern city of Minneapolis has rules like this, but one of our even more progressive and modern Councelmembers, Gary Schiff, wants to change it.<\/p>\n
I lived in Gary’s district from the time he was first elected to only a short time later, when I moved to a different district in the same city, but I’ve followed his career and news about his district since then for various reasons. He’s a good council member and understands the needs of his constituents, and just as importantly (in my view) he takes on issues that a member of a city council could easily (though not legitimately) ignore or claim to be out of the purview of municipal government. (Political issues like same sex marriage and war and stuff.)<\/p>\n
Gary is annoyed by the churchy rules and is proposing that they be changed. He…<\/p>\n
…wants to nix a city rule that prevents most restaurants outside of downtown from opening near houses of worship. It’s one strand in a web of liquor regulations that govern businesses in Minneapolis, but Schiff says this one, in particular, explains “why there are so many vacant commercial storefronts.”<\/p>\n
“Businesses shouldn’t have unfair rules placed upon them because a religious place of assembly is located nearby,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The proposal will be discussed today at the Council. Some people are complaining.<\/p>\n
“We don’t want to walk out of church on a Sunday afternoon and look across the street and see people coming out of bars,” said Duane Gagnon, chairman of the parish council at Saints Cyril and Methodius Catholic Church in northeast Minneapolis.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
You know, there are those of us that are not church goers, but find churches and their privilege annoying, and guess what? Maybe we don’t want to walk out of our favorite restaurant after a nice meal and see all these churchy people wandering around doing their annoying churchy stuff! <\/p>\n
Mr. Gagnon, I have no problem that you are annoyed at people who are not like you doing things you seemingly would not do yourself, but that is not a good justification for having what amounts to a legal restriction on other people’s legal and rather run of the mill behavior. The fact that you think that your belief system should be imposed on everyone else is, in fact, more than a little disturbing. <\/p>\n
One of the complexities here is interesting and worth note: Increasingly, things that are technically “churches” are being opened in mixed-use business zones and strip malls. Once a church does that, the other store fronts are now restricted from a wide range of possible development. <\/p>\n
(The article reporting this is here<\/a>, in the Star Tribune. Here’s<\/a> Gary Schiff’s web site.)<\/p>\n
The outcome of the current re-examination of church-spirit separation will be also be important for the planned development of one or more microbreweries in Minneapolis. This is serious stuff. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I remember when I was a kid, someone in my family had a farm near a small town with one tiny grocery store (at which you could get gas), one tiny liquor store (at which you could get gassed) and one tiny church (at which you could … well, whatever). One day I was at … Continue reading On The Separation of Church and Booze<\/span>