Get out, you heathens

I've got Reuter's Oddly Enough News's RSS feed on my google homepage and tend to read about half of the stories. Most of them are fairly innocuous. But every now and again an actually semi-important story slips through and gets qualified as odd.

The recent story of an unwed couple of Black Jack, Missouri who are being threatened with eviction because they violate some sort of city statute that says no residence can have more than three unrelated (by marriage, blood, or adoption) people living there. The two adults (who have two children together) have filed a lawsuit against the municipality claiming discrimination.

Okay, I can understand how some people might want to keep their neighborhood the way it is, to keep unwanted influences out, but this really does sound like a pretty obvious form of discrimination. It's not really been all that long since there were cities that wouldn't allow blacks or hispanics to move into certain areas, and (in my view, at least) just about any discrimination is a bad thing.

• Black Jack's official homepage - I was surprised to learn that they're pretty much a part of greater St. Louis.
• Black Jack's info page from the St. Louis County's site
• Wikipedia's page on Black Jack - it's one of my blind spots, but somehow I assumed that city was mostly white, which turns out to be totally untrue.
• Black Jack's March 26th press release detailing the case - this kind of makes the homeowners sound a bit duplicitious in the whole situation
• Black Jack's May 16th, 2006 statement on the case - "The purpose of these occupancy permit laws generally is to: avoid overcrowding by non-related parties, assure the lifelong maintenance of the cities housing stock, prevent new buyers from being obligated to repair residences that were not kept up to code, preserve the character of the neighborhoods and the City and to protect the general safety and welfare of the City’s residents."

It sounds awfully noble, but it still stinks of discrimination. It's easy enough to say things like this with a wink and a nod when talking about not wanting "the wrong kinds of people 'round here". The problem is that to somebody, every one of us is "the wrong kind of people". Either we've not got enough money, we're too snooty, we're the wrong religion, our skin isn't the right color, or our family isn't enough like the "right kind of people".