To the Editor,
Leaving an evening showing of the new movie “Jackie” last night
at the Kimball’s Peak Three Theater, my girlfriend and I marveled at how
charming and delightful downtown Colorado Springs looked all lit up for
Christmas. We have also enjoyed the festive religious and secular holiday
displays located in and outside of businesses and on front lawns all over
town. And finally, one simply cannot escape the ubiquitous Christmas
music playing in restaurants, doctors' offices, hair salons, and grocery stores
between Thanksgiving and New Years Day. Christmas cheer is indeed
everywhere – as it is every year. This is as it should be given the
immense popularity of the holiday season to believers and non-believers
alike. Winter celebrations have ancient pagan roots.
I am thus quite puzzled by today’s lead editorial. If, as
the Gazette contends, “litigious publicity mills” like the Freedom from
Religion Foundation (FFRF) are on an “annual buzzkill” crusade to “censor [!]
the sights and sounds” of Christmas, they are doing such a terrible job at it
that one wonders why the Gazette felt the need to attack FFRF.
I would like to correct the record about FFRF. On its website, the organization acknowledges that religious holiday displays on
public property are legal “in narrow circumstances.” It explains helpfully that
the constitutionality of such displays is determined “on a case-by-case basis.”
It provides a list of eight factors weighed by courts when ruling on these
matters. Most importantly, it advises its readers: “if, after assessing
these guidelines and reading the summary of the two Supreme Court cases below”
you think a religious display is illegal, then you may request assistance from
FFRF. Potential complainants are implored to “please provide as much detail
as possible.” This is hardly the guidance one would expect from an
organization allegedly bent on making community leaders “shudder in fear” with
threats of “nuisance lawsuits.” While I have no direct access to the
detailed criteria FFRF uses when deciding to challenge a constitutional
violation in court, I assume from this publicly available information that it does so only when a violation is clearly present. FFRF has a long track record of winning (or successfully settling) such cases. The
Gazette is free, of course, to regard such cases as “nuisances.”
I would also take issue with what appears to be a truly novel
reading of the First Amendment. The Gazette emphasizes that the
constitution does not say a person’s freedom to practice his religion is
limited to “private property.” This is undoubtedly true. I can freely
read the Bible aloud on my back deck and I can equally freely read it aloud on
the corner of Tejon and Bijou (as a few visible preachers regularly do). But
whose religious views, specifically, are being expressed when a city prominently
displays a nativity scene at the entrance to its main offices? Is the Gazette
suggesting that the “free exercise” clause of the First Amendment requires nativity
scenes to be displayed on public property? Stated differently, is a
private citizen’s right to celebrate Christmas infringed when the government
merely refrains from celebrating along with him? The Gazette seems to
think so. Yet this would be a view of “free-exercise” jurisprudence not
recognized by any court anywhere across this fruited plain.
Finally, the Gazette rather snidely describes FFRF as a
“mom-and-pop outfit in Wisconsin” in order to create the impression that the
organization is nothing but a small group of “mean-spirited activists” trying
to ruin Christmas in small towns across America. You really should
correct this gross mischaracterization and tell your readers that FFRF is the
nation’s leading church-state separation advocacy group whose leaders frequently
appear on national television, whose cases often achieve national coverage, and
whose annual conferences attract the leading lights of the freethought
community.
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