Krishnas and Hamburgers, Catholics and Strippers

Folks,

This will eventually appear as a Monkeyfist editorial, but first I'm
going to offer it as an opinion piece to the Dallas Morning News
(hence it's < 750 words and tactical approach). I'm hoping people here
can give it a once-over for me. I'd hate to send something in with
obvious flaws to the "real" paper in town.

And thanks to Bijan, Niel, Ola and a few other #mf denizens for
chatting with me about it this afternoon.

Kendall Clark
--
(757 words)

One of Dallas's best-kept secrets is the Hare Krishna community in the
Mount Auburn neighborhood of East Dallas. About twenty years ago, a
group of Krishnas moved into a decaying neighborhood and began slowly
tranforming it. Together with Mount Auburn's other residents, the
Krishnas have reclaimed the neighborhood from the jaws of urban decay.

But all that the Krishnas have worked to achieve is now threatened
because McDonald's wants to build a new restaurant directly adjacent
to the Krishna community, which includes a temple, restored homes, and
a school. McDonald's wants the City of Dallas to make an exception
because the land isn't zoned to allow a fast-food restaurant. Even
worse, the City zoning commissioners seem poised to accomodate
McDonald's request.

Though it may be hard for some Dallas residents, including zoning
commissioners, to understand, making an exception to allow a
McDonald's to be built directly next to a Hare Krishna temple is
culturally insensitive at best. To see why this is the case, you only
have to think about the way zoning works in American cities.

Strictly speaking, there's nothing about building a strip club
directly across the street from, say, a Catholic church that
constitutes an infringement of religious liberty. However sleazy the
strip club is, the priest will still be able to deliver a homily,
offer confession to the congregants, christen infants, give last rites
at the local hospital, serve soup and bread and sweaters to the poor
and needy. The congregants will still be able to attend mass and do
all the other things that Catholics do.

And so you might expect to find strip clubs and churches co-existing
as uneasy neighbors throughout the country. But you'd be wrong. You'd
be wrong because in every American city zoning restrictions and other
laws say that you can't build a strip club near a church or school.

While it isn't a violation of religious liberty, close proximity of a
"sexually-oriented business" and a church is harmful to the fullest
pursuit of religious liberty. Zoning laws are about balancing harms
and helps, community and individual freedoms with commercial
interests. They reflect the accumulation of a long moral conversation
about the things a community values.

Dealing with a strip club is, for Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hare
Krishnas, and other religious people, an onerous, tiresome, and
offensive burden. In fact, this is so obviously true, we don't even
argue about it anymore. Over the course of 50 or so years, the
argument about the harm that strip clubs cause churches has become
ingrained in our laws and our customary practices. You can think of
zoning laws forbidding the close proximity of strip clubs and churches
as the community's settled moral conclusions about the issue.

But wait a minute, you're probably asking, a McDonald's isn't a strip
club, is it? No, but then Christians and Krishnas aren't the same
either. Vegetarianism is central to the Hare Krishna faith, a variant
of Hinduism, which has practiced vegetarianism for many thousands of
years in India and Asia.

Asking Hare Krishna school children to suffer the odors and the trash
of a busy McDonald's during playground recess is exactly analogous to
asking Christians to worship at a church next door to a strip club. We
don't even argue about the latter any more. If eastern religions
continue to grow in America at their present rates, I suspect the
Dallas zoning laws in 100 years will mean future Dallas citizens don't
argue about the former either.

The only relevant difference between McDonald's and strip clubs,
Krishnas and Christians, is that the religious and cultural history of
the United States, and of the average Dallas citizen, is full of
experiences with Christianity and other western religions, but lacking
much experience with Krishnas and other eastern religions.

If respect for diversity and religious tolerance is really going to
mean something, the test we must pass as citizens is whether we're
willing to extend it to religions we don't understand very well, even
ones we can't imagines ourselves belonging to. At the very least, we
should be sure the zoning commission consults with outside experts who
can help make up for their cultural infamiliarity.  It isn't fair for
them to make a decision without all the relevant facts.  

Until the zoning commssioners understand as much about Hare Krishnas
and McDonald's as they do about Christians and strip clubs, any
decision they makes is more likely to reflect cultural infamiliarity
than the relgious tolerance that makes America a decent place to live.