Brookville, Indiana residents want to keep a nativity scene on government property.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation sent a letter to Franklin County commissioners and the Brookville Town Council demanding the removal of the scene from the courthouse lawn.
The group said that the display violates the First Amendment and said it had received a complaint about it.
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Brookville Town Council President Michael Biltz said the display, owned by the city, has been at the courthouse for at least 50 years without complaint.
Just because no one’s complained about it doesn’t make it “tradition” or right. FFRF is correct about the law. (But feel free to help skew the poll on the WLWT website.)
Reader Pluto Animus sent a suggestion regarding how to make sure this sort of thing never happens again:
What if a couple of brave, warmly-dressed volunteers stood on either side of the nativity, holding large signs that read “Myth” and “Fiction”, with arrows pointing at the creche? What if the news media were alerted? The news media would find such a story — such an image — irresistible. And photos of that scene would soon be seen in newspapers, on TV and on the internet by many thousands of local people.
But this would definitely upset many, many more people than the billboards. (After all, the billboards do not question the truth of the Jesus story.) The story could very quickly go national. And when asked by news media what they hope to achieve, our protesters can simply say, “We wouldn’t be doing this if the nativity were on private property. We respect other people’s religion as long as they do not use government to promote it. We are trying to discourage them from using the government to promote the Christian religion in this way. If you don’t want us out here openly questioning your beliefs, don’t use my taxpayer dollars to promote your superstitions.”
Your thoughts regarding how effective that would be would be appreciated.