Not Enough Parking, Not Enough Intestinal Fortitude

Out on the far western end of Kentucky near Paducah is the town of Mayfield.  It's not a huge town by any stretch of the imagination, but this week it's the latest battleground on the 1st Amendment, religious bigotry, and Islam.

For Mayfield's zoning board, it was about parking spaces. For the 250 residents of this western Kentucky town who reportedly cheered when the zoning board rejected a building permit for a new mosque, it was clearly about something else.

On Tuesday night, the Mayfield Board of Zoning Adjustment rejected a request from a local Somali group to build a mosque along the city's East Broadway, a strip of commercial and industrial properties. According to the Louisville Courier-Journal, the board rejected the mosque application because of concerns there wouldn't be enough parking in the area. (The area in question is pictured on the right.)

The Paducah Sun reports that some 250 area residents, packed into the hearing, "cheered" when the board announced its decision.

Now some observers suspect more than parking space concerns fueled the board's decision, and the Courier-Journal reports that the American Civil Liberties Union is "trying to get more information" about the decision.

Gosh, what could possibly be going on in the American zeitgeist that would give anyone any reason to suspect that cheering on the denial of a mosque's permit might have something to do with other than parking issues?

What's more, the Courier-Journal reports the Somali group that had petitioned for a zoning variance to allow the mosque to be built weren't present at the time of the decision -- because security had refused them entry, not realizing they were the people behind the project. The C-J reported:

The Paducah Sun and WPSD-TV reported they did come, but were initially denied entrance because the room was full and officers did not realize they were there to represent the project. When the mistake was recognized, officials searched for them outside the building but could not find them, according to the reports.

The C-J reports that Mayfield has a Somali community numbering in the hundreds, who arrived last year to take up work at a local chicken processing plant.

So this is an immigration story as well as a mosque story.  I think you get bonus points in the winger scorebook for that double barrel blast of hate.

Jeff Keith, a pastor at the First Baptist Church in Mayfield, told the C-J he hoped the Somali group could find another location for the mosque, so that the community wouldn't feel "unwelcome."

“Mayfield ... is a very neighborly area,” he told the newspaper.

Yeah, good luck with that.  Now why would African Muslim immigrants ever feel unwelcome in a state like Kentucky?  It's not their fault that 1000 miles is too close to Ground Zero to build a mosque...