One of the few surprises about the dreadful “debate” about the proposed Islamic community center in lower Manhattan has been how few people have picked up on a delicious irony: under the Federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, Park 51 is on solid legal footing.
If you’re not familiar with RLUIPA, as it’s called, the basic thrust is to prohibit local governments from using zoning laws to limit unfairly how churches and other religious institutions use their property. It forbids, for example, developing suburbs from leaving no space for churches or other non-profit organizations that would be exempt from paying property taxes. Believe it or not, that has been a problem.*
If you don’t see why this is ironic, check the date on RLUIPA’s passage: 2000, when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress.
So:
“If the City of New York denies the zoning approval sought for this site, it will blatantly violate [the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act] and expose the city to one whopping lawsuit that is extremely likely to succeed,” as Chicago attorney Dan Lauber told Chicago Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet. “A federal law adopted by a Republican Congress makes the denial the Republicans seek blatantly illegal.”
Several high-profile opponents of the mosque plan—including the American Center for Law and Justice and the Anti-Defamation League—have in the past defended the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, arguing that it “protects religious land uses from discrimination.”
Thus because of Republican legislation, conservative opponents of the Park 51 project have had to fight not on legal grounds, but on the far weaker notion that the community center’s organizers should build elsewhere out of respect for the Ground Zero site. That, it should be said, is hardly a compelling argument.**
Or as Melissa Rogers puts it on the Interfaith Alliance’s State of Belief radio show, once again religious freedom means freedom for everybody, not just the people we like. That ought to be an obvious statement, but apparently it takes some spelling out for modern conservatives. It would be nice to say that spelling it out might have some effect, but movement conservatives have demonstrated anything these days, it’s that they aren’t much interested in consistency, or logic, or embarassment at the leakiness of their ideas.***
*The “institutionalized persons” part of RLUIPA bolsters First Amendment rights of prison inmates and others. The institutions that house them have to make reasonable accommodation for their religious beliefs. That’s been interpreted to mean allowing Christians to possess bibles or Muslims prayer rugs, for example, but followers of Native American practices cannot use peyote.
**Speaking of hardly compelling arguments:
Supporters of a Greek Orthodox church destroyed on Sept. 11 say officials willing to speak out about a planned community center and mosque near ground zero have been silent on efforts to get their church rebuilt.
It’s fine if this church thinks it’s getting a raw deal from the Port Authority. But really? They’re not getting their preferred settlement because of pro-Muslim favoritism?
***You can also catch me discussing my new book on the first segment of the same show.
