A recent Newsweek has an article about Tom Monaghan (a devout Catholic who founded Domino's Pizza) and his plans to build his dream town in Florida. There's a 5,000 acre tomato field where he wants to build a cathedral, whole town, Roman Catholic university, etc 30 miles east of Naples. He plans to build 11,000 homes and already has over 7,000 people who have showed interest in buying a home there.
He says nonbelievers are welcome, but he wants the community to embrace his conservative values and is asking (not forcing) pharmacies to not carry contraceptives.
Now my Contemporary Issues class was debating this article. Many of the students said that not allowing the pharmacies to sell contraceptives is unconstitutional. Now I feel like this town is a great idea as long as nobody is forced to go there or not allowed to live there. Tom Monaghan owns the property on which the pharmacies would be located, so I don't see why so many of my fellow students thought it was such a violation of rights. First of all, he isn't completely not allowing contraceptives, so people could just drive to a nearby town if they wanted them. And second, families intending to move there will most likely be so religious that they won't want to use contraceptives anyway. I just don't see why so many people have a problem with this. There's a town here in Connecticut that doesn't allow the sale of alcohol and I don't see people upset about that, but not allowing the sale of contraceptives makes people irate. Its Tom's property and he can choose to sell or not sell whatever he pleases.
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Agreed - the only issue is if he sells the usage of his property like a rent and then decides what people have to believe in order to get the ability to pay the rent. It'd be flat out prejudice if he charged more for atheists than for catholics.
Those are really the only cases where I see issues. Otherwise, Tom can do whatever the hell he wants. It's his property.
Who says atheists can't be tolerant?