RonF didn’t hear of it, therefore it isn’t important. Besides, it’s an example that proves the point, so it ought to be dismissed.

I’m not quite sure what it would take to get you to take your metaphorical fingers out of your ears, RonF, but if “death threats in response to a polite request for a menorah” doesn’t strike you as anything but ‘hyperbole’, it would seem that the answer is “nothing”.

Since my relatives on the east coast had heard about it from sources other than myself, I can only assume that it was, in fact, national news. But, since this has no effect on your life, it may be that it made no impact on you. I can assure you that many non-Christians nationwide noted the incident. Thus, “national furor.”

National and international sources follow:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16150563/
http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Briefs/10072.htm
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/11/national/main2244710.shtml
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2006/12/oh_christmas_tr.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/12/AR2006121200155.html
http://cbs4denver.com/watercooler/Christmas.trees.airport.2.275803.html

This next one, though unintended, is a perfect example of the chilling effect these sorts of incidents have:
http://simplyjews.blogspot.com/2006/12/chanukah-miracle-in-sea-tac.html
(scroll down to item #2)
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nat-gen/2006/dec/12/121203038.html

Do you need more links to believe that this was really national news?

That created a national furor. Bogomilsky received death threats and the FBI was called in, according to Harvey Grad, his lawyer.

Hmmm. “National furor.” I’m sure no great suppressive effect came of this.

Hmmm. National furor indeed. In whose mind? I never heard of this until now. Hyperbole isn’t evidence. And “no suppressive effect” != “enormous suppressive effect” != “local suppressive effect”, so I don’t see where you’re coming from in that comment.

They’d rather display nothing than be forced to put a menorah up.

Not the solution I favor. My solution would be to put up the trees, put up the menorah, and tell the lackwits to bug off. This takes us back to the issue of why bureaucrats do what they do. Fear, or laziness?

RonF Writes:
January 3rd, 2008 at 8:00 am
I’m not trying to duck anything, I’m just confused about what you’re talking about. I thought you meant a gay rights parade on St. Patrick’s Day that would replace an actual St. Patrick’s Day observance.

I’ve highlighyted that last part because I think this is where you and I are not communicating.

What is an “actual StPday observance?” How do you define it? And who gets to decide whether something makes the cut? You? Me? Spectators? Anyone Irish? The government?

Do all such observances require green beer, green bagels, and leprechauns? do all such observances require that no gay rights groups participate?

This is what “content neutrality” is about. It takes the impossible-to-answer question and makes it moot.

So, back to Christmas…. I celebrate Christmas in a certain way. Is my way the “wrong” way; is yours? Do you really want the government making that call?

Is it only the “right” way if I’m christian? What if I’m a nonpracticing christian? What if I think that it should involve self-flagellation and 24/7 prayer until I faint? What if I think it should be entirely secular–and avowed as such–and focus solely on consumer purchasing?

The odd thing is that you seem to think these decisions should be made–that they can be made. To me, that’s a clear sign you are thinking about this too narrowly (helped substantially by your inability to even understand what a gay rights StPday parade would be). It looks to me that you’re fine with the government passing judgment, because it seems that you assume all those judgments will go in favor of you.

Tell me this. Would you then be in favor of anti-abortion group getting to hold a parade on January 22nd (the day that Roe vs. Wade was decided) and thus elbowing out the pro-choicers? How about an anti-affirmative action group on January 15th? How about an anti-gay rights parade on June 28th (Stonewall)? These are all celebrations tied to dates as well. It doesn’t all flow one way.

Sure. the KKK can march through Memphis for all I care. It’s what the first amendment means.

So, then, how much fear did those event generate? Understand that I certainly oppose the behavior in all of them; the people involved should be punished in accordance with the law. But it’s doubtful to me that they had an “enormous” suppressive effect in this country, although there was quite likely a local one. One that could be overcome if the local government would take some action.

jeeeesus. It’s doubtful to you because you are 1) not experiencing it yourself because of your class membership; 2) not willing to test your theory; and 3) wilfully ignoring the people who are trying to explain that it exists. Wake up, willya?

I’m sure that the death threats received by the rabbi who requested that SeaTac Airport put up a menorah (an event that had major coverage in the NW) had, at most, a minimal effect on the Jewish community in the NW. Hell, Jews are used to that sort of thing after centuries of experiencing it and just shrugged it off. I’m sure that there was no effect on whether or not other Jews in the NW would make that sort of request in the future.

And, hey! Look what Seatac decided to do this year:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003961584_holidaydisplay19m.html

They’d rather display nothing than be forced to put a menorah up. Nope. No fucking suppressive effect at all. Expletive.

One quote from the article:
Last December, airport officials ordered Christmas trees taken down after Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky asked to have an 8-foot-tall menorah put on display at the airport.

That created a national furor. Bogomilsky received death threats and the FBI was called in, according to Harvey Grad, his lawyer.

Hmmm. “National furor.” I’m sure no great suppressive effect came of this.

You can’t really believe your words here, can you? You can’t possibly be that obtuse.

I’m not trying to duck anything, I’m just confused about what you’re talking about. I thought you meant a gay rights parade on St. Patrick’s Day that would replace an actual St. Patrick’s Day observance. Now it appears you’re proposing to merge the two into a ‘gay rights St. Patrick’s Day parade’, and I don’t understand what that would be.

Tell me this. Would you then be in favor of anti-abortion group getting to hold a parade on January 22nd (the day that Roe vs. Wade was decided) and thus elbowing out the pro-choicers? How about an anti-affirmative action group on January 15th? How about an anti-gay rights parade on June 28th (Stonewall)? These are all celebrations tied to dates as well. It doesn’t all flow one way.

It doesn’t need to be “common” to have an enormous suppressive effect. It just needs to engender enough fear to affect people’s behavior.

So, then, how much fear did those event generate? Understand that I certainly oppose the behavior in all of them; the people involved should be punished in accordance with the law. But it’s doubtful to me that they had an “enormous” suppressive effect in this country, although there was quite likely a local one. One that could be overcome if the local government would take some action.

RonF Writes:
January 2nd, 2008 at 4:49 pm

Fine, then, Jake; 3 instances. In a country with 280 million people and millions of towns, villages and cities I’m shown 3 instances where people putting up or wanting to put up non-Christian religious displays ran into difficulties. I still don’t see where that establishes that such a thing is common.

You are missing the point. It doesn’t need to be “common” to have an enormous suppressive effect. It just needs to engender enough fear to affect people’s behavior.

Gay rights groups were found to not have a right to march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Boston quite rightfully, since the permit was granted to the group organizing the parade and, having been awarded the permit, they had the right to determine who w0uld be in the parade and who wouldn’t. Heck, I just got a letter from a local municipality regarding their 4th of July parade (these people plan ahead!); they are quite specific about who gets to march and who doesn’t, and I see no reason why they shouldn’t have a perfect right to.

Oh, sure. No disagreement there–a parade is a single-viewpoint affair.

It’s not as if there’s an overall problem for gay rights groups in Boston to get a permit to have a parade. I’ve seen them myself. But IIRC it was judged that that group’s presence would interfere with the message that the St. Pat’s parade was trying to communicate. And that shows a mismatch between your comment and the related note; getting a parade permit to march for gay rights on the same time and place as the people getting the parade permit for St. Patrick’s Day is a different situation than the gay rights group getting the right to become a part of the St. Patrick’s Day parade.

It’s not a mismatch, it was just an example. And you’re deliberately trying to duck the hypothetical.

Say I want to throw a “gay rights St Patrick’s Day Parade.” Surely you can see that this would mean 1) it’d be on StPDay, 2) it’d involve gay rights, and 3) it would conflict with the “usual” StPday parade.

Having granted a group the permission to communicate a particular message in the public square, I certainly think that it’s required by the Constitution that another group should be able to communicate an opposing message in the public square; but I see no reason or requirement that the !A group should be able to interfere with A’s expression by requiring both to be at the same point and time.

Sure. HOWEVER, the decision of who gets to say what, when, is huge. And it needs to be apportioned equally, without regard for the underlying messages of A and B. If the apportionment DOES include analysis of the content of A and B, it is not content-neutral.

Now, the fact that some messages are tied to a given date does present some challenges. One question to look at there is whether denying a group a given date interferes with their message.

Nope. See, e.g., “content neutral,” above.

What you seem to be (deliberately) ignoring is that allowing groups to “claim” certain dates, messages, times of distribution, etc., and asking the government to enforce these claims, is inherently just the type of discrimination that the First Amendment is designed to prohibit. The whole content neutral part is there in part because we have realized that it is a very bad idea to have the government sticking it’s nose into your “message” and deciding whether it’s worthy.

Sailorman:

“Find a place with a nice parade–say, St. Patrick’s Day in Boston–and try to get your own parade permit for, hmmm, gay rights.* On the same day, in the same place. *Carefully chosen, because AFAIK gay rights groups were denied the ability to march in the St P’s parade in [B]oston.”

Gay rights groups were found to not have a right to march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Boston quite rightfully, since the permit was granted to the group organizing the parade and, having been awarded the permit, they had the right to determine who w0uld be in the parade and who wouldn’t. Heck, I just got a letter from a local municipality regarding their 4th of July parade (these people plan ahead!); they are quite specific about who gets to march and who doesn’t, and I see no reason why they shouldn’t have a perfect right to.

It’s not as if there’s an overall problem for gay rights groups in Boston to get a permit to have a parade. I’ve seen them myself. But IIRC it was judged that that group’s presence would interfere with the message that the St. Pat’s parade was trying to communicate. And that shows a mismatch between your comment and the related note; getting a parade permit to march for gay rights on the same time and place as the people getting the parade permit for St. Patrick’s Day is a different situation than the gay rights group getting the right to become a part of the St. Patrick’s Day parade.

Which makes sense - on that basis, a gay rights parade would have to permit Dr. Dobson and his crowd to march with them. Or if some group wanted to put up a memorial to Stonewall, they’d have to permit an anti-gay-rights display in the same spot at the same time. I’m not in favor of that either. Having granted a group the permission to communicate a particular message in the public square, I certainly think that it’s required by the Constitution that another group should be able to communicate an opposing message in the public square; but I see no reason or requirement that the !A group should be able to interfere with A’s expression by requiring both to be at the same point and time.

Now, the fact that some messages are tied to a given date does present some challenges. One question to look at there is whether denying a group a given date interferes with their message. Obviously it makes no sense to set up a Nativity creche in July, nor does it make sense to hold a 4th of July parade in August or a St. Patrick’s Day parade in November.

“It’s public land, you’re public… can’t you do what you want?”

I can’t even do what I want with my own private land. Public land will quite reasonably be under even more constraints.

Actually, the State cannot exercise that kind of content control

Please tell me where I’ve said that the State can exercise content control.

You didn’t say it (and I didn’t attribute as such)–but you described a situation that involves it.

Obviously. But it can quite easily say, “O.K., the nativity creche goes over here and the Wiccan wreath goes over there and the Menorah goes up over yonder.”

Not necessarily, actually. Sure, if there’s entirely equivalent space in the town square I suppose it can be simple, but that is often not the case. If one is going under a street lamp, and one behind a garbage can, and one on the corner… well, assignment can be challenged.

It doesn’t have to put them next to each other.

It doesn’t HAVE to, but there’s no reason that the State should care. Other than things like public safety, it’s not the State’s job to “protect” A or A’s display from the views of B or a B display. Nor is it the state’s job to analyze the messages of A or B and decide whether they’re complementary or opposing.

I also don’t see where, if the town square is small enough that only a limited number of displays can fit, the town must permit the !A message to share the same space and time as the A message. They have every right to say “The Christians reserved the space from 12/15 to 12/30 - the atheists can have it from 1/1 to 1/15″.

That’s not true.

So what if the town square is only 5×5 feet? Why the heck would the christians get 25 square feet? Just give everyone one square foot and you can fit 25 different people on.

If you really insist on sole ownership (which would probably not stand up in court) then the christians can have it, maybe, ethically…. for one year. So long as you don’t mind, that is, if the Christian folks get denied the next year, and shuttled into January, so that the atheists can post in December. And the following year the jews get it, and then the muslims, and then the wiccans… no Xmas displays for 20 years or so until it’s the christians’ “turn” again. Because the christians sure as shit don’t “own” December. Does that work for you?

More realistically you’ll split it. You can only have one parade down a given street on a given day, but you can fit as many displays into a space as you want.

If the pro-choice folks want to have a parade on the day that Roe vs. Wade was handed down, the pro-life folks don’t get the right to join that parade, nor do they have a right to have a parade on the same day and time. Now, if the pro-life folks get their act together enough that they reserve the parade route on that day before the pro-choice folks do, then too bad for the pro-choicers. If the pro-choice folks get their reservation in first, they have exclusive right to the parade route on that day, but the pro-life folks have every right to ask to hold a parade the next weekend.

Sure…. so long as there aren’t government machinations which just so happen to result in the prolifers always “winning” the parade date. Or the christians always “winning” the town square around Xmas.

Problem is, government stagnates, and it’s very hard to change things. Again, i encourage you to test your theory. Find a place with a nice parade–say, St. Patrick’s Day in Boston–and try to get your own parade permit for, hmmm, gay rights.* On the same day, in the same place.

Hey, you should have to wait no more than a year, right? I mean, there couldn’t be any way that they would deny you and your minority group a right to have a parade, just because some extremely powerful group with a history of doing it wants the spot? Hmm? It’s public land, you’re public… can’t you do what you want?

Good luck.

*Carefully chosen, because AFAIK gay rights groups were denied the ability to march in the St P’s parade in boston.

That’s a fairly large roll of the dice. As for me, I HAVE tried things on occasion–asking for Jesus-on-a-cross to come down from my public library, for example–and the results have been poor. I’ve had similar conversations with other people–regarding Hallelujah choruses or “Christmas concerts”–and the results have also been poor.

You basically ask us to “prove it”, but really that’s unrealistic. You’re asking us to bet AGAINST ourself. Because after all, if we’re right, which we obviously think is the case, then “proving it” is going to be damned unpleasant. If I “put my money where my mouth is” then i’m going to get shafted; I think I will lose.

That’s the reason that I suggested you prove it. Unlike me, and a lot of other people, you seem to think it’s really no problem. Great! If you’re right, you will suffer no ill consequences. And believe me, I’d be happy to be proven wrong about this.

My past experience with this has made me unwilling to try it just for the sake of proving that the consequences exist.

May I refer you to comment #22 on this thread? Multiple sources are linked for the SeaTac Airport incident. No emails in that comment.

I would draw a distinction between a courthouse display and the local town square. What is permissible in the latter is not necessarily appropriate in the former.

Speaking of datapoints; outside of one e-mail that referenced one town that said “rather than permit displays from all religions we’ll have no religious displays” and the Green Bay incident, where a Wiccan wreath next to a manger scene got vandalized, I haven’t seen anyone allege any actual difficulty, extra-bad treatment, etc. The reasons for those specific two outcomes and all the other comments are all speculations, not actual experiences. I’d need to see more than two datapoints from your side of the argument to buy into the concept that this is a widespread pattern rather than a couple of isolated incidents. I presume that’s why the original post said

I wish somebody I know would go up there and put up a Menorah, and see how the locals respond.

I’m presuming from the wording that nobody actually has done this yet. Now, she goes on to say that

In my experience, a very large majority of southern Ohio folks are all for freedom of religious expression, when it in involves Christianity. But if somebody went up there and put up a Menorah or any other non-Christian symbol, they’d throw a fit.

But I don’t see any actual examples quoted.

Actually, the State cannot exercise that kind of content control

Please tell me where I’ve said that the State can exercise content control.

If the State permits the expression of A, it must also permit the expression of !A, even if it detracts from A’s message.

Obviously. But it can quite easily say, “O.K., the nativity creche goes over here and the Wiccan wreath goes over there and the Menorah goes up over yonder.” It doesn’t have to put them next to each other. I also don’t see where, if the town square is small enough that only a limited number of displays can fit, the town must permit the !A message to share the same space and time as the A message. They have every right to say “The Christians reserved the space from 12/15 to 12/30 - the atheists can have it from 1/1 to 1/15″.

If the pro-choice folks want to have a parade on the day that Roe vs. Wade was handed down, the pro-life folks don’t get the right to join that parade, nor do they have a right to have a parade on the same day and time. Now, if the pro-life folks get their act together enough that they reserve the parade route on that day before the pro-choice folks do, then too bad for the pro-choicers. If the pro-choice folks get their reservation in first, they have exclusive right to the parade route on that day, but the pro-life folks have every right to ask to hold a parade the next weekend.

Nativity scenes are vandalized fairly regularly around the country, most often by stealing the infant Jesus to the point that it’s becoming common practice to bolt Him into the manger.

Through the palms?

# RonF Writes:
January 2nd, 2008 at 10:06 am

Michael, I’m waiting to see when people are going to start protesting against religiously-oriented place names such as Assumption, Mount Olive, St. Louis, Los Angeles, San Antonio, San Diego, San Bernadino, San Francisco (I wonder what Saint Francis would think of the city bearing his name these days?), Christchurch, etc.

[shrug] Don’t like ‘em, but they’re old. It’s sort of a straw man, too… the question of whether those would be appropriate NOW is quite different than the question of whether we should erase the decisions made THEN.

RonF Writes:
January 2nd, 2008 at 10:11 am
As far as I know that is in fact already allowed. In fact, you don’t even need to link “every time someone put up a Ten Commandments tablet” and “The Top Ten Really Evil Things Christians Have Done” - you can put up the latter regardless of whether the former is up or not.

Reeeeeeally? Hey, why don’t you try it in your local courthouse? Or your local town square? Then you would have a handy datapoint to apply to your apparent claim that all us folks who are alleging difficulty, extra-bad treatment, vandalism, etc, are basically making it up.

# RonF Writes:
January 2nd, 2008 at 10:11 am
I’m not away of any part of the First Amendment that would require that every time someone puts up an expression of viewpoint “A” in the public square the State must also permit an expression of “!A” in the same location and the same time.

Actually, the State cannot exercise that kind of content control (with various exceptions which don’t apply here.) If the State permits the expression of A, it must also permit the expression of !A, even if it detracts from A’s message.

A may have a right to use of the public space, but they probably don’t have a right to exclusive use of the public space*. This isn’t necessarily obvious from the constitutional text, but it’s the law of the land as interpreted.

*The state can impose reasonable time/place/manner restrictions. But it has to be content neutral. So while it might–MIGHT–be OK to say “only one group at a time can put signs on the town square in December” you couldn’t also say “…and we will always grant that right to christians, as opposed to atheists.”

As far as I know that is in fact already allowed. In fact, you don’t even need to link “every time someone put up a Ten Commandments tablet” and “The Top Ten Really Evil Things Christians Have Done” - you can put up the latter regardless of whether the former is up or not.

Now, I’m not away of any part of the First Amendment that would require that every time someone puts up an expression of viewpoint “A” in the public square the State must also permit an expression of “!A” in the same location and the same time.

Either way, if vandalism was a major problem in a Christian display you can bet they’d put up cameras to catch the vandals.

I’ll take that bet. Nativity scenes are vandalized fairly regularly around the country, most often by stealing the infant Jesus to the point that it’s becoming common practice to bolt Him into the manger. I’ve never heard of a vandal being caught on camera. Perhaps you could offer some evidence as to why your assertion is reasonable.

I didn’t skip past it - as far as I can tell there is no controversy here (or anywhere else, for that matter) that the State should not pay for a Nativity creche to be put up.