A recent CNN online article reports that Dominoes Pizza founderm Thomas S. Monaghan, wants to build a Roman Catholic community to be called "Ave Maria," around the Catholic Universtity of the same name. With "God's Will" and $250 million, the community would allow no abortions, no pornography, no birth control and no free, independant, normal adult life.
Of course, civil libertarians are making the right call that this is unconstitutional. Asinine is what I'd call it. Not that people shouldn't be able to live lives free of joy. The biggest problem I have is that it will never work. Marias they want? Marias they will get. Experience has shown that repressive, religious communities are not only great at producing guilt, they are even better at producing sin.
There's a little part of me that wants this Catholic Disneyland City of Tomorrow to come true, because Las Vegas would have nothing on Ave Maria. This little town could be much better than Garden Grove from Dangerous Housewives. Pregnant teenaged girls. Gay teen suicides. Furtive, shameful gay sexual liasons in parks, stds, a great big black market in birth control, porn, sex toys and worst of all, do-it-yourself abortions.
I know--slippery slope naysaying. But this kind of thing, a little town that forbids these wicked sins, is not new. Remember the middle ages? The Puritans of old and the Amish of today don't have such a great track record in abstinence-only "education" and rates of teen pregnancy. In the closet gay persons tend to engage in riskier behaviors in repressive communities. When gay people were coerced into heterosexual marriages, of course they become adulterous "sinners." Will adults stop having sex, and will adult women stop trying to avoid having litters of children? Ask Catholic priests.
The upside of all this is that pornography and sex toys will increase in value. That's good for business, and it makes the stuff much sexier. But just as prohibition and the drug wars did nothing but create criminals, these prohibitions will create a lot of sinners. This community had better raise enough money to build a great, big Ave Maria jail. It had better have a nursery.
Thanks for listening.
3 comments:
Can't have a good fire-and-brimstone sermon without sinners to rail against and hold up as an abomination. What is not mandatory is forbidden! What is forbidden will not stop, but it fuels the witch hunt. The more things that are forbidden, the more money the clergy can raise to combat them. It's all about the quality of life after all. The clergy's life, that is.
I want to visit the factory in some 3rd world country that makes those sacchirine-putrid plastic dashboard Marys. I can only imagine what a religious experience working in a sweltering, smelly injection mold factory for pennies must be.
saccharine
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