The Town FEMA Turned Down
The tide goes out on religious liberty
Nov 25, 2013, Vol. 19, No. 11 • By JONATHAN V. LAST

Ocean Grove, N.J.
When Sandy swept across the Jersey shore in October 2012, the coastal town of Ocean Grove was spared the worst. Sure, half the town’s boardwalk was destroyed and its pier was swept out to sea. And yes, sand, trees, and concrete benches were carried two blocks inland, while entire buildings were picked up and moved across town. But Ocean Grove’s crown jewel, an ornate and beautiful 6,250-seat auditorium, built in 1894, survived. It only had a third of its roof torn off. The auditorium’s foundation was intact and, most important, its 11,561-pipe organ was unscathed by the wind and rain.

So despite everything, the residents of Ocean Grove counted themselves lucky. That is, until they had to deal with the federal government. Ocean Grove has been denied rebuilding funds from FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In one sense, this denial is part of the Obama administration’s quiet campaign against religion in the public square. Yet the story of FEMA’s conflict with Ocean Grove is about more than just Barack Obama. It’s the story of modern America’s rebellion against its religious foundations, rendered in miniature.
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Methodists tend to be a tolerant bunch, and New Jersey Methodists especially so. In the 1990s, gay Americans began flocking to Asbury Park, just above Ocean Grove, and sparked the gentrification of that failing town. Some of the migratory overflow spilled into Ocean Grove, which now has a sizable gay population itself. By all accounts, these new residents were welcomed into the Camp Meeting Association with open arms.

There was no tension between the Methodist association and gay residents in the late ’80s and early ’90s because very few people in America—even in the leading echelons of the gay-rights movement—had at that point imagined the idea of same-sex marriage. And to the extent that “gay marriage” existed as an abstract concept at all (it emerged in the wake of an aggressive Hawaiian court ruling in 1993), virtually no one thought it should be a constitutional right.

But in the span of just a few years, all that would change, and Ocean Grove would become the site of a small skirmish in the gay-marriage wars. In 2007, an elderly lesbian couple from town, Harriet Bernstein and Luisa Paster, sought permission from the association to use a pavilion on the boardwalk for their civil-union ceremony. The association politely declined, explaining that same-sex couplings went against the church’s teaching. The couple filed a complaint with the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights, which promptly revoked the tax-exempt status of the pavilion.

The fight escalated from there. The association filed suit, with the help of the Alliance Defense Fund. Bernstein and Paster brought in the ACLU. In the end, the only safe harbor the association could find was changing its policy to disallow all wedding/commitment ceremonies at the pavilion. Bernstein and Paster then held their civil union at the Ocean Grove fishing club, which leases a pier from the Camp Meeting Association, just a few yards down the beach. It is possible to view this outcome as a tremendous act of accommodation on the part of the association—which deprived all couples of the opportunity to marry at the pavilion so as not to single out one same-sex couple. From their comments to the media, Bernstein and Paster seemed to view it as a defeat; they had been hoping for a different sort of accommodation.

Fast-forward to 2013. In the immediate aftermath of Sandy, Ocean Grove requested $2.25 million in funds to rebuild their boardwalk. This initial request was denied, and FEMA announced that it now regards Ocean Grove’s boardwalk as a private, religious “recreational facility” ineligible for federal relief. Thinking there was some misunderstanding, the shellshocked Camp Meeting Association quickly appealed the decision. Their appeal was denied, too.
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In other words, the government’s hostility to tradition and support for personal freedom are in no way absolute. Because while it looks askance at religious convictions, it commands reverence for gingerbread and picket fences. A society so deeply confused about its history can only despair for its future"



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