Think again.  It took a federal court to overrule a county court in Tennessee to let a congregation of muslims to be allowed to use their new mosque. ... and over a year of litigation and restrictions by the county court judge (see here).

The contentious fight over the mosque stems from a 2010 lawsuit filed by a group of residents who made repeated claims that Islam was not a real religion and that local Muslims intended to overthrow the U.S. Constitution in favor of Islamic religious law.

And to believe an honest to god (the Christian god I presume) judge found a way to uphold this claim by other means before a Federal Court finally overturned him ... and this occurred in the freedom of religion good ol' U.S. of A.  If this isn't the definition of southern bigotry, I'm not sure what is.

 "If ICM were a Christian church, it would have been granted a certificate of occupancy and would be worshipping in its new facility today," a memorandum to the federal court reads, citing 20 instances of Christian churches that have been allowed to build since 2000. "

Don't anybody try to ever tell me that much (too damn much) of the southern states' population would still prefer to return to the laws and land of our forefathers sometime before the current constitution was written.  ... or failing that, then secede. 

It really, really offends my deepest sense of the nation's founding principle of freedom of religion, laws, and constitutional rights that have been in force for two hundred years that any state court, local county court, or village judge (village idiot) can willfully, without prejudice or fear of federal prosecution and incarceration in a federal penitentiary for crimes against the state can so blatantly and persistently violate this most basic and fundamental constitutional right.    It smacks of an act of treason in fact!  I'm embarrassed for the nation... embarrassed that this can occur at all anywhere in this nation.  

Maybe  federal marshals and a federal court should take over (not just maybe... it should) that county in Tennessee as a federal protectorate for the next 100 years to reconstruct it's entire culture and political system.  In fact, we ought to invite 1000 Buddhist monks to build a monastery there, and tax local citizens to pay for it, and some Hindu's as well.  It sounds like the christians there need some lessons to learn.  Come to think of it, besides that, maybe the county should also pay for a world class natural history museum showing the lineage of current humans from the primordial soup single cells a billion years ago, through the early primates, and up through early humans 200 thousand years ago.  I say this because it's really good odds that the population of that county also believes in creationism.  And while it's under a federal protectorate, the county should also probably have twenty first class free abortion clinics... enough to satisfy demand from most of the other southern states around it.... and the county residents should also be taxed to pay for the clinics and their operations and salaries.  Make it "Abortion central, USA".  Local political rule can be applied for again a 100 years from now.