If you own a store, you probably figure that you can sell just about anything that a store can legally sell in your area. You might need a special license for something like alcohol, but in principle you're allowed to sell it all - right? Wrong. Apparently, if the previous owners of the property had a moral objection to certain things, they may have included a covenant into the sales contract prohibiting sales of those things - and there's nothing you can about it. That's what a Texas 7-11 store found out when it was forced to stop selling issues of Playboy magazine.

Agape Press explains:

It was back in 1982 when a Christian businessman sold property to 7-Eleven, Inc., for a store in Fort Worth. The contract included a restrictive covenant which stated that the property could never be used for the sale or display of any obscene material. Recently, the Christian businessman discovered that pornographic magazines were being sold at the store. Attorneys with Liberty Legal Institute intervened and, as attorney Hiram Sasser says, the offensive material was soon removed from the store's shelves.

According to Agape Press and the law firm that represented the previous owner, this was a blow on behalf of "religious freedoms." This, I think, is one of the most obvious cases where conservative, evangelical Christians conceive of their own "religious freedom" not so much as the ability to adhere to their own faith but, rather, the ability to force others to adhere to their religious standards and restrictions. The lawyer that represented the previous owner seems to also encourage religious property owners to put restrictive covenants into sales contracts in order to prevent the sale of things they don't like.

Read More:

• Recent Books on Free Speech
• Court Decisions on Free Speech and Censorship