Daddy, Papa and Me

Guy has a property in a housing development in Provo. This development has a clubhouse and swimming pool. Like Provo, this development is overwhelmingly Mormon. So, it just seemed natural to close the clubhouse and swimming pool on Sunday. Except several residents who pay dues and taxes were Muslim, secular and Jewish (or just not particularly observant Mormons). Since weekends were the only time they could really enjoy the pool they were helping pay for, they asked that it remain open on Sunday (I assume they suggested a weekday closure when it was not used). The answer from the neighborhood association was "NO." It was the sabbath and they were going to be intransient. The non-Sunday-Sabbath-observing residents sued. The association lost and the pool and clubhouse were open on Sundays (and from my observations last year, well used on that day!)

Fast foward. Utah had a severe outbreak of "crypto" last year and put into place a strict super chlorine treatment requirement on all public pools. This treatment has to be done weekly and leaves the pool unswimmable for about ... well.. 24 hours.

So what day do you think the above housing development decided to do the treatment?

Yep, you are right if you guessed _Sunday_. They actually do the treatment late Saturday night and the pool is... imagine... unusable on Sunday.

As the Church Lady would say...

"How Conveeeeeeenient"

I'd be generous and suggest that it's just the elephant inadvertently crushing the mouse.. but with the previous lawsuit, I'm pretty sure it had something do to with a majority seeing an opening to impose their practice on the minority.

Ok, it's just a swimming pool and a Sunday, but multiply that a few thousand times (many times inadvertently and unknowingly and with good intentions, sometimes purposely and not-so-good intentions) and I can get the picture of how it might be to live in a community that has one dominant group.

I would hope that Mormons, having been a persecuted minority (and sometimes still), would be a bit more sensitive to those in the minority around them, but from my observations of human nature... many minorities... racial, ethnic, linguistic, sexual-orientation, gender, religious... can quickly lose the lessons of that minority status the moment they become the majority.

Sad, but true.