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...the notion of a religiously-governed community in a sea of secular culture is a very American idea. In fact, that was characteristic of the original colonies: here was a place where Catholics, Puritans, various German Anabaptist sects (including the Amish), and others could go and set up their own communities and run them according to their religious principles, without interference from their persecutors overseas. Or in other states, as in the case of the Mormons. I'm all for these folks moving into their own little fiefdom where they can be free from non-procreative sex and leaving the rest of us the hell alone.
The question is whether, unlike the largely self-sufficient Amish, the Pizza Pope plans for his settlement to benefit from state school taxes and public services, so that non-paleo-Catholic Floridians have to foot the bill for his little experiment in civil-rights-free living, and whether he intends to exert enormous pressure on surrounding communities to stop providing contraception and abortion services. That's the problem with fundamentalists and why they need to be stopped that my liberal Protestant brethren have been so slow, historically to grasp. They're not merely interested in living and letting live in their own little enclaves: they want us to live like them so that their weak moral constitutions never have to come in contact with the seductions of secularism.
