Sign Stolen?

[gritsar]

Quote:
The christmas (Yule) tree, bunnies & eggs at easter (Ostara), masks and treat giving on Halloween (Samhain). All pagan symbols and rituals The Church "allowed" pagans to keep in order to make them more comfortable with the new religion, christianity. The Church just put a different spin on things.

 

[Rosalind]

Quote:
So when I was 13 there was this roller rink, and...<edited for family-friendly forum>...and my husband said it was the awesomest thing he had ever seen in real life, and he thought that sort of thing only happened in magazines or to rock stars.

OK, let's hear it!

 

[redhen]

Quote:
So when I was 13 there was this roller rink, and...<edited for family-friendly forum>...and my husband said it was the awesomest thing he had ever seen in real life, and he thought that sort of thing only happened in magazines or to rock stars.

OK, let's hear it!

...

..

 

[I have WHAT in my yard?]

Quote:
The christmas (Yule) tree, bunnies & eggs at easter (Ostara), masks and treat giving on Halloween (Samhain). All pagan symbols and rituals The Church "allowed" pagans to keep in order to make them more comfortable with the new religion, christianity. The Church just put a different spin on things.

These ladies are correct The catholic church's own documents show the deliberate choice to use the holidays that were already being celebrated by putting a christian spin on them.

There is even documentation that shows them choosing deliberately to make the image of the "green man" the "god"
worshiped at the time as the image of the "devil". This was completely deliberate and deliberated.

When I hear Jesus is the reason for the season I have to chuckle.

Oh religious tolerance org is one of the best sites out there. Space and Motion.com is also good.

 

[Chicken Salad]

Here's another sign of the times....from the early Colonies....

 

[Mac in Wisco]

That sign has nothing to do with freedom of speech or equality among groups. The group that placed that sign, Freedom From Religion, is about banning all religious symbols and statements from publicly owned areas. While placing that sign goes against their whole principal of removing such things, they place it in protest and feel it is within their right to be rude and disrepectful to the views of others.

I first learned of them when they filed a civil suit asking for the removal of a monument in a hometown park. The park is just a natural area among the downtown part of a city. Mowed lawn, trees, and sidewalks among some office buildings. In one corner of the park is a small granite monument with an inscription of the ten commandments and a Thank You to the youth of the city who pitched in to help when the city was flooded in 1965. It was placed by a local civic group over 40 years ago with permission of the city. Now some private group from out of the area comes along and tells the people of the city, "You can't have that on public property. It infringes upon my rights". They are systematically doing this across the country.

 

[PortageGirl]

Well, I kind of think it is more of speaking out about their own 'lack of belief' and why, which does make it an expression of opinion in contrast to the tacit support of religion which is what the nativity scene amounts to.

Thing is, a lot of people think that it’s only atheists who object to prayer or religious monuments/symbols of any kind in schools or in other civic venues. Actually, some of the lawsuits against prayer especially in schools were started by Christian churchgoing families whose teens were being bullied by other Christian churchgoing teens about how they were going to burn in hell etc if they didn’t get ‘born again’. It was ‘Christian on Christian’ bullying! The fact is, not all Christian faiths take that quite as literally as others do, and when other not christian faiths get involved, it gets even more complicated.

Now, I’m sure that most parents don’t tell their teens to browbeat other teens that way, though I have also seen adults do similar thngs to each other, but by putting a stop to all such things on public property, it avoids even the APPEARANCE of government support of any one religion or sect, and any sort of problems like that. People can decorate their homes, read and teach any religious info they choose, visit any church, temple, chapel, synagogue, shrine, oak grove or anyplace else they wish to anytime they want to… but by having anything at all on taxpayers’ areas, it gets complicated. I don’t care if there’s a Menorah, a Crèche, a Minaret, a statue of Buddha, and another one of Vishnu next to a Goddess symbol and that SAME sign saying everyone else is full of hooey. It doesn’t bother me a bit, but if it bothers anyone at all, I say put them on private property and be done with it, don’t ask taxpayers to support any of it.

 

[Mac in Wisco]

Quote:
That's not good enough for this group though. Many of these displays in public parks or other municipal properties are donated by civic or church groups and take little, if any, of the taxpayers money to maintain. When these suits are brought forth, many times a local church congregration will offer to buy the parcel of land from the municipality and maintain it, in order to keep the disputed monument or Christmas display. Yet the group will continue to argue that the presence of such items is still offensive and drag the legal proceedings on and on, running up legal costs for the taxpayers in the hope that they will finally give in.

 

[ksacres]

While I respect others ability/desire to believe or not believe in whatever they choose, that sign is a study in hypocrisy!

 

[mom'sfolly]

Even if something is donated by a church or civic group if it has a religious intent it doesn't belong on public property. Why??? Because if one group is allowed to put their religious display on public property, than any other religious group would be allowed also. If not, it becomes a public endorsment of one specific religion. So, if the Knights of Columbus put up a plaque with the 10 commandments forty years ago and no one objects; it is a non-issue until it is pointed out or some other group requests a display, say the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

The Bill of Rights was intended, in many ways, to protect the rights of minorities from the majority.