Last week I wrote this post about the federal Department of Justice investigating the City of Alpharetta over a zoning case which involved a local mosque. I understand that some people believe the mosque decision was a case of religious discrimination but I followed the case closely and there has never been one shred of evidence produced to support that claim. The Justice Department may find some evidence of discrimination and if so I expect the city would immediately reverse their decision. But why did the feds choose to investigate that particular case without any evidence of discrimination?

I bring this up again because the Roswell Neighbor contains this article by Joan Durbin about a zoning case that the City of Roswell decided against a Christian school. As far as I am concerned that case and the case involving the mosque are both zoning issues that just happen to involve religious organizations and when the Roswell case was originally decided against the school it also sued the city. In the case of the Christian school the article says:

The court stated it was “within the purview and discretion of mayor and council to determine the factors of the preservation of the residential neighborhoods.”

Funny though… the article doesn’t mention a federal investigation over that case. Surely the Justice Department wouldn’t single out zoning cases involving mosques for special scrutiny would they?

It just so happens that my son plays baseball on a field with no lights because the neighborhood stopped a Christian school from installing them… but the justice department never investigated that case. So how is the Justice Department deciding which zoning cases to investigate when there is no evidence of discrimination?

If they are going to investigate cases involving mosques or temples shouldn’t they be investigating ones which involve churches too? I am not seriously suggesting that every zoning case involving a religious institution should be investigated by the federal government but it does seem blatantly discriminatory to bully local governments about cases which involve an Islamic mosque while ignoring similar cases which involve Christian churches. If all religions are protected equally then every religious organization should get the same level of protection afforded to mosques, right?

Otherwise people might get the idea that some religions are more equal than others and that wouldn’t be right because the arbitrary application of justice is no justice at all.