My Current Opinionby Guy SpiroIt is said that all politics is local -- and a situation is occurring in our own back yard here in the Chicago area. There is a move by at least one village trustee in south suburban Alsip to pass what is commonly known as a "fortune telling ordinance." While this situation could easily be laughed off as silly, it is a serious matter. No one condones the activities of the phony predator psychic who preys on the gullible. Taking thousands of dollars sometimes, claiming to lift curses and effect cures, these people are criminals. There are already laws against the kind of fraud that they commit. We don't need new laws to prosecute cases such as that. What, then, can be the motivation to pass such a law as the "fortune telling ordinance" in Alsip -- to protect the public? At the state level, laws are already in place to do that. Most often, this kind of law is passed to restrict the activities of those with other than mainstream ideas. Sometimes the motivation is from the rational thought - materialist mentality that seeks to stamp out superstitions of any type. Sometimes the motivation is religious as there are many who view anything that smacks at all of the "supernatural" as demonic. Both streams of this kind of regulatory thought seek to impose their realities on the rest of us through the use of law, and both are wrong to do it. Laws such as this are as unconstitutional as they are morally wrong and should be opposed wherever they pop up. You might want to let the following people know what you think of their plans.
Village Trustee Carl Ceretto |