The US Constitution is not pick and choose

There has been a lot of noise about a mosque, approved by local planning boards, being built in lower Manhattan being too close to the World Trade Center site. Many people feel that it is too close to the site and it is disrespectful and wrong to build it so close to where such tragedy took place. Well, while the First Amendment allows those people to speak their minds, that same provision allows the Muslims who want to build a mosque. The constitutional guarantees of freedom, including freedom of worship, were not suspended by 9/11, despite the efforts of certain politicians and partisans. The right and freedom to worship, or not, is a key freedom. Despite what some bigots say (and these people are bigots), 9/11 has not superseded the First Amendment.

If the Imam of the proposed mosque is political, take way the mosque's 501(c)(3) tax-emptness. But if the property for the mosque is in accordance with a comprehensive plan of zoning that is allowed for that area and the local planning board and community agrees that a religious building being constructed in the area is appropriate then that should be that. No American has a right to tell someone they can't open a church, synagogue or mosque in a certain area for the arbitrary and discriminatory reason that some of the same religion did something wrong and YOU don't want them to worship in a certain place for no other reason. This is NYC 2010, not Berlin 1940. Polls don't matter.

Yes churches are denied permission to build due to zoning reasons all the time, but the zoning for the lower Manhattan area allows for churches and the mosque. Either all are banned or none are banned. You don't get to pick and choose. That is un-American and un-Constitutional. Period. There is no other argument. And the "real Americans" who say otherwise should be sent back to school for a remedial course in American history.