Riverbank (CA) Nativity Scene Returns

The Modesto Bee ^ | December 4, 2003 | Inga Miller - Bee Staff Writer

[Diver Dave]

A child's doll lies in a pile of straw in a crib before the city's welcome sign on Patterson Road, rekindling the spirit of the season and the perennial question of who put up the Nativity scene.

No one is owning up. The scene, including figures of Mary, Joseph and Jesus and the three wise men, is on city property -- a potentially questionable place for any religious display, City Manager Richard Holmer acknowledged.

[Jaded]

"Is it a problem?" City Councilwoman Sandra Benitez asked. "I think it is a very positive thing. I feel that it is fine. I don't think that the Constitution, the way I read it, means that you can't put religious things on public property."

Said White: "I get complaints when it doesn't go up" immediately after Thanksgiving. "Obviously it is on city property. But if it wasn't on city property, I would hope we would have a Nativity scene."

Fred Herman, an organizer of a Modesto branch of the the American Civil Liberties Union, said the problem with putting it on a city-owned lot is that it can be "a slippery slope" to more overtly government-sponsored religious décor.

Herman just needs to mind his own binez. It's only a slippery slope because of addle-brained Godless liberals like him.

[madprof98]

He said he did not like to sound like a Scrooge at Christmas. "My concern is only that it is a slippery slope, and where is this going to lead?" he said.

If there's anybody who knows about slippery slopes, it's the folks at the ACLU.