Powered By Blogger

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Churchgoers and Traffic Laws

I read this on jezebel Ridiculous New Law Would Permit Churchgoers to Ignore Traffic Lights

I took them literally, but this is actually about a very vague constitutional amendment in North Dakota that could be manipulated into protecting religious discrimination against gays.

The thesis of this post was completely disregarded in the comments however, which quickly devolved into hating all those churchgoers who take up precious parking spaces. Apparently in SF there is a big problem with churchgoers essentially taking up all the parking on entire streets. An excerpt:


I don't know if it's a State thing or just a local thing, but in San Francisco you're allowed to double park your car during services if you're going to church. When I lived in Western Addition, the block I lived on was pretty much impossible to drive through from all the double parked cars.
I never understood the exception. Finding a parking spot was hard for EVERYONE in our neighborhood. Everyone else had to circle around for 45 minutes and then walk five blocks, why did some people get to leave their car in the middle of the darn street just because they were going to service? Having to endure basic inconveniences of city living isn't exactly throwing them into an arena to be eaten by lions.



There is a similar situation in downtown Austin, where churches offer free parking in pay to park lots to lure churchgoers. As far as I can tell it is not a huge problem in Austin, (but what do I know, I am sound asleep like a decent person on Sunday morning) but it does bring up an interesting question. Who has more of a right to those precious few spaces? Churchgoers or those who chose to spend their Sunday with a nice mimosa, eggs benedict, or pregaming before whatever sporting event is in season?



No comments:

Post a Comment