Sociology > Education > "Christians, Veterans Team Up to violate separation of religion/govt."
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Sociology > Education |
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23 May 2007 07:02:09 AM |
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"Christians, Veterans Team Up to violate separation of religion/govt." |
Christians, Veterans Team Up to violate separation of religion/govt.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/viewstory.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200705/CUL20070521a.html
Christians, Veterans Team Up to Protect Religious Memorials
By Nathan Burchfiel
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
May 21, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - The nation's largest veterans' service organization is
teaming up with two Christian legal groups in an effort aimed at protecting
Christian-themed war memorials from lawsuits that would remove them from
public property.
The American Legion is asking its members to contribute to a catalog of war
memorials that feature crosses and other religious symbols. The group will
monitor its database of memorials and will notify the Alliance Defense Fund
and the Liberty Legal Institute of any attempts by the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) and similar groups to challenge their
constitutionality.
The effort stems from recent attempts by the ACLU to have crosses removed
from memorials in Mt. Soledad, Calif., and in the Mojave Desert.
As Cybercast News Service previously reported, President Bush in 2006
signed a law transferring ownership of the land from San Diego to the
federal government. The ACLU challenged the voter-approved land transfer,
but in December 2006, the California Court of Appeals "Mojave Desert case,
the ACLU challenged a cross erected in 1934 by the Veterans of Foreign Wars
to honor "the dead of all wars."
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals instructed the Department of the
Interior to dismantle the cross, which at the time was located on land
owned by the federal government.
Congress in 2004 authorized the sale of the land to private parties in an
effort to save the cross, prompting the ACLU to file a lawsuit challenging
the land transfer deal. A federal district court judge ruled in 2005 that
the transfer was invalid and ordered that it be removed.
The cross is currently covered with boards, making it resemble a box on a
stick rather than a cross. Meanwhile, Christian legal groups like ADF are
appealing the 2005 decision.
"Stamping out these symbols of sacrifice is the first step to forgetting
who's kept America free and what's made America great," ADF Senior Counsel
and Vice President Joe Infranco said in a statement announcing the project.
"ADF, the American Legion and Liberty Legal are joining together to ensure
that we will never forget the sacrifice made by so many for our precious
freedoms," he said, "including the freedom to honor our fallen heroes as we
choose."
Infranco said crosses on veteran's memorials "are under attack" and that
"Americans want these memorials to be protected."
According to one anti-religion activist group involved in the campaign
against crosses on memorials, many of the monuments are probably safe until
their lawsuits start working and it becomes clear the Supreme Court would
uphold their removal.
"I would not jump into the fray until we see what happens with these other
cases [Mt. Soledad and Mojave Desert]," Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president
of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, said, adding that "the ACLU might
feel the same way: Let's wait and see."
A spokesman for the ACLU did not respond to requests for comment Friday.
"There isn't a way to address all of them," Gaylor told Cybercast News
Service. "You have to take these violations one case at a time, and we are
facing a very hostile Supreme Court.
"If it wasn't the current court, I would have no concern that this could
possibly be upheld," she said, "but with this new court, we don't know how
they're behaving, but they seem to be behaving very badly on separation of
church and state."
Gaylor called the land-transfer attempts to protect the two crosses
"despicable" and criticized Congress for getting involved in local cases.
"They have gone out of their way in Congress getting into the act. It's
just been a very sobering education about the lack of understanding of
separation of church and state and the willingness to be manipulative and
to try to subvert the First Amendment."
She said war memorials that feature religious symbols are offensive and
unconstitutional because "it isn't the business of our secular government
to have any opinion ... on religion, much less plant crosses on the highest
point in any city and put it as part of a government park."
***************************************************************
You are invited to check out the following:
The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm
American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm
The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
HRSepCnS · Historical Reality SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/
***************************************************************
.. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
.. . .
****************************************************************
USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote
"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"
That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.
It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.
*****************************************************************
THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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