"Ayatollah Sistani is 'not a Khomeini.'"

And Castro was just an "agrarian reformer" I recall the American left claiming during the Castro revolution.

Now, let's be fair; Castro is to the right of many of his fellow Harvard men.

Instead of reading this blog, I am supposed to be reading about a thousand pages of legal arguments on RLUIPA, in preparation for motions on Dec. 12 in a local case.

This one might cause you federalist religionists some conflicts. Or maybe not. What say you, lawyers?

RLUIPA -- unjustified congressional infringement on state's rights, to be held off by court sovereignty; or justified redress against rampant secularism?

"But there is absolutely no excuse for the Massachusetts legislature jumping when Massachusetts Supreme Court Chief Justice Margaret Marshall says "jump."

The Ohio Legislature stiffed the Ohio Supreme Court when the court told the legislature to change the school funding system. After 5 rulings, the Court threw in the towel.

Harry -- Neither.

I think RLUIPA is kind of silly, but I don't have any federalism problem with it.

Silly? The case here involves a church that practices a "Joseph ministry," which puts the kids in the fields to grow food. (As near as I can tell, it's sort of a graft of Succoth onto what they regard as primitive -- no bishops -- Christianity, but don't hold me to that part.)

So they want a church in a big (about 5 acres) field. Ergo, in the agricultural zone.

In our county zoning, you can have a riding academy or a sugar mill, as of right. But they got turned down for a church building.

Seems pretty serious to me. Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is supporting the church, Hale O Kaula, and there's quite a bit about the case on their web site.

(I might agree about silliness, in part, if we were talking about the institutionalized persons part of the act.)

You can't let localities use zoning laws to restrict religious practice for the same reason you can't let them use taxes.

Harry -

I was thinking more of the Institutionalized Persons provisions when I dismissed RLUIPA as silly. Hale O Kaula's situation isn't quite silly, but from what I can gather from the Becket Fund site (and your reporting), I'm pretty much unmoved. I'm no great fan of zoning laws generally, get rid of them all for all I care, but I don't see that Maui is acting out of hostility to religion or that churches should have more right to use their land than anyone else.

As I understand it, not more right but the same right.

Maui's zoning laws don't prevent much and are badly drawn to boot. But that's another issue.

A sugar mill is a huge industrial activity with hundreds of workers. It was ridiculous to make it a permitted use in the ag zone, there should have been a separate ag/industrial zone for it. (In fact, all the sugar mills have heavy industrial zoning anyway.)

But there it is. If a sugar mill is not overuse in a quiet zone, then a church with 60 members seems pretty inocuous.

The irony of all this, for me, is that when I was a young reporter in Virginia, the people who wanted much more restrictive land-use practices would always say, "Look at Hawaii, it has statewide zoning. That's what we need" (to counteract the county boards, which were invariably made up of real estate developers and insurance agents).

So I get to the promised land and what do I find? Statewide zoning with more holes than a colander.

You religious zealots are all alike.

I'm a Libra. I like to see the scales balance.