Seventh-day Adventists have a long tradition of fighting to protect religious liberty. Simply put they want to make sure they’re free to worship on their Sabbath. They take this seriously enough to be part of regional and national religious liberties organizations, run their own regional religious liberties departments (complete with a legal staff), and often local congregations will have a religious liberties director who shares with the congregation about some of the battles for church/state separation and personal liberty.

Unfortunately not everybody understands liberty. A group of Adventists in Loma Linda, CA, home of Loma Linda University and the Loma Linda University Medical Center, don’t want a McDonald’s in their town.

Mayor Rigsby almost has the right position on it, in that he want’s to give people the freedom of choice about whether or not they want to be vegetarians and whether or not they want to eat fast food. But since he suggests a ballot initiative do block future fast food chains, its obvious that he’s trying to keep his actions under the current legal framework, but is all for a fast food ban in his town. That’s bullshit.

It’s also bullshit for the group lead by Dr. Dysninger to try to use the government to keep the town’s status as a “symbolic city for healthiness,” since if he’s a good SDA religious liberty supporter he would oppose blue laws in another town’s drive to keep their status as a symbolic city for “holiness.” Pushing your values on the rest of the town is not a good thing to do because it compromises people’s liberty and it sets a bad precedent.

A great example of how community standards can shape businesses is Rexberg, ID with a population that is more than 90% LDS and the only bar in town went out of business a few years back due to lack of business. They didn’t prevent the bar from opening, they just let the market shape it. They do have a bowling ally that serves beer and an Applebee’s that servers beer and wine, so there are still options for locals who want to go out for a drink to get one, but its in businesses that don’t rely on alcohol sales. They also don’t have a single coffee shop in town and the locals told me when I was there that the best place to get coffee in town was the local McDonald’s, again, it’s a case of businesses being regulated by the local market.

Fortunately the city counsel approved the development and on my lunch break today I’m going to be going to a McDonald’s here in Boise.