Lou Gottlieb, was an American bassist and comic for the music trio The Limeliters. He held a Ph.D. in musicology and was considered one of the so-called new comedy performers. A new generation of unabashed intellectuals that included Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce. In 1966, he established the Morningstar Ranch, a community that he declared open to all people and which later became central to a legal dispute related to the ethics of land ownership.

In 1966, Gottlieb moved to the Morning Star Ranch, a 30-acre property in Sonoma County, CA. Folk singer Malvina Reynolds and her husband Bud had told him about the property, also known as "The Digger Farm". Gottlieb referred to himself as the "resident piano player". Gottlieb's Morning Star Ranch attracted a shifting population of young people, later to be known as hippies who were dissatisfied with the world they had inherited and were determined to create a better one.

In 1968, Gottlieb left the land he owned (Morning Star Ranch) to God, aligning this to the "creation of a new society inspired by ethics, security and love..." arguing that, "...free access to land would reduce the problem of human conflict, by eliminating 'the territorial imperative'."

However, during this process, Gottlieb coined the acronym LATWIDNO (Land Access To Which Is Denied No One) which it has been suggested could be seen as "exposing a muddle of contradictions underlying American society and law...[specifically]...the absence of recourse guided by ethics within [the] current legal system." 

With God now the owner of real property, or the Morning Star Ranch in Sonoma, CA, BETTY PENROSE and her attorney RUSSEL TANSIE saw an opportunity in 1969 to sue God in a Sonoma court for the destruction of her property in Arizona. 

This is her story.