The Arizona Republic comes out against the Mormon Temple, but for the wrong reasons
An editorial says the plan, originally for a 48-foot-high building, “needs tweaking”:
The church deserves credit for lowering the building by 8 feet, to 40 feet. But more concessions are needed to make this project a nice fit for the neighborhood.
The Church still gets to add a spire of nearly 80 feet on top.
It’s good the paper, however delicately, is telling the city council to limit the church’s plans to what is currently allowed.
But it should have made clear that the Mormons vaporized any claim to religioso bonus points when it went on a jihad against gay marriage.
As PHXated has said before, the Mormons should be able to build what the current zoming allows—a thirty-foot building—and nothing more.
The Church’s hostility to gay marriage—and its funding of anti-gay marriage initiatives here and in California—is within its right. But there’s no reason the city should give special dispensation to an institution that spends its money persecuting those who are striving for equal rights under the law.
Phoenix has enough problems with its national image without having the Mormon Church’s profile be any higher than it is now—literally or figuratively.
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Dumb things John Shadegg says
This is from a few days ago:
Speaking on the House floor Monday night, Republican Rep. John Shadegg wondered whether bringing the professed mastermind of the 2001 attacks to face trial in Manhattan would endanger everyone from the mayor’s daughter to the “judge’s wife.”
“Well mayor, how are you going to feel when it is your daughter that is kidnapped at school by a terrorist?” Shadegg said.
The next day, Shadegg was reported to have proffered this non-apology apology:
Shadegg told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he was sorry.
“I apologize for the insensitivity of my remarks with respect to the mayor or his family, however I think it is important to note that this decision involves potential risk to innocent people,” Shadegg said.
I was watching Team America: World Police again the other night, and it reminded me now much of the recent dialog about the KSM trial in Manhattan was reminiscent of the talk in the film; Matt Stone and Trey Parker capture perfectly the bland way politicians invoked the words “terrorist” or “weapon of mass destruction” in the years after 9/11.
It all seems a little dated, now, but of course guys like Shadegg like living in that particular past. They get off talking like a backwoods preacher scaring kids with stories of a bogeyman in the forest.
I just don’t know why he felt he had to apologize to the mayor of New York; the offense of his comments wasn’t to Michael Bloomberg but rather to anyone with a brain.
Shadegg’s not a creep because of his political views; he’s a creep because he thinks his constituents are stupid.
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