A Sage Decision On The Buddhist Temple

A decision by Newtown’s Planning and Zoning Commission five years ago this month led to a long and bitter legal wrangle that finally ended just last week. It involved the town, residents in the Boggs Hill area, the Cambodian Buddhist Society of Connecticut, and in a sense a larger community keenly interested in the cultural and legal issues raised in the case.

P&Z’s 2003 rejection of the Buddhists’ controversial proposal to build a 7,600-square-foot temple/meeting hall at its ten-acre property at 145 Boggs Hill Road raised questions about religious freedom and local land use prerogatives and how the law sorts out conflicts between the two. A unanimous state Supreme Court ultimately found that this was not a case of arbitrary religious discrimination, as the plaintiffs had alleged, but of a town’s right and responsibly to enforce land use regulations that protect public health and safety and preserve the environmental integrity.

This case was almost impossible for the media to ignore because it lent itself so easily to the quick-sketch stereotyping that sometimes passes for reportage: A largely white affluent town turns its back on Cambodian Buddhists looking for a place to worship. The case was never about religious or cultural intolerance, however. Even the most vocal opponents of the proposed temple/meeting hall said they would welcome such a facility to town — just not in a rural residential neighborhood. These same people were not objecting to the monks who had been living on the property since the Cambodian Buddhist Society bought the property in 1999, just to the major festivals that had been scheduled for the site over the years — events that the proposed land use changes would have legitimized.

The Supreme Court’s decision sagely reconciled the letter and intent of state and federal laws protecting religious freedom with the common sense provisions of local land use regulations that protect everyone, regardless of their background or beliefs, from unsafe traffic conditions and the overly intensive use of properties that are clearly unsuitable for such use. The rights and privileges of the Constitution and of fairly and uniformly enforced land use policies are considered complementary and not contradictory — at least in Connecticut.

We are glad this case has been resolved and hope that the adversarial relationship the town has had with the Cambodian Buddhist Society for the past five years can now be put aside. We would like to see the Supreme Court ruling serve as a catalyst for a new cooperative effort by local land owners, land use agencies, and the Buddhist Society to find a suitable place in Newtown for a new temple and meeting hall.