Posted on 03/10/2005 8:53:28 AM PST by NormsRevenge
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - The American Civil Liberties Union is suing to block the federal government from leasing to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints a site where more than 100 Mormons died in 1856.
The ACLU claims the government converted Martin's Cove into a religious site and gave the church authority to place unconstitutional restrictions on visitors.
"It's a violation of the First Amendment, and specifically it entangles church and state because the government has entered into a partnership with the LDS church," said Mark Lopez, an ACLU attorney in New York.
The 25-year lease, signed with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in October, gives the church oversight of about 1 1/2 square miles of land in central Wyoming. The church pays $16,000 a year.
In October 1856, a company of Mormon pioneers, mostly poor European converts, was trapped there by an early snowstorm as they neared the end of a 1,300-mile trek to Utah. They sought shelter in the cove, where many died. Rescuers from Salt Lake City wrapped the dead in blankets and buried them under piles of rock.
Lloyd Larsen, a Wyoming official for the LDS Church, said that Martin's Cove should be accessible to and appreciated by all.
"Without the church's willingness to make this remote area accessible to visitors and tell the story of those who died there, it would still be isolated and unappreciated," he said.
The lawsuit was filed Wednesday on behalf of four Wyoming residents and the Western Land Exchange Project, which advocates public access to decisions about federal land. Interior Secretary Gale Norton and BLM Director Kathleen Clarke are named as defendants.
One plaintiff, Susan Wozny, claimed that when she visited Martin's Cove, LDS guides repeatedly asked her about her religious affiliation and prevented her from accessing part of the trail, saying it was "sacred" and "hallowed ground."
The Mormon church originally wanted to buy 1,640 acres of land at Martin's Cove, but public opposition to that idea led to the lease compromise. Congress approved the lease in 2003, and President Bush signed the bill later that year.
What happened to them?
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
However, the ACLU will defend Native American burial grounds that are on on federal land as being "sacred" to their culture and therefore, "protected". Lewis Carroll is laughing.
The Mormons have gone wimpy :-)
"It's a violation of the First Amendment, and specifically it entangles church and state because the government has entered into a partnership with the LDS church," said Mark Lopez, an ACLU attorney in New York."
Time to put to rest the fraud and lies perpetrated by the ACLU on the unsuspecting consciousness of the public about the "violation of the church and state clause." THERE'S NO SUCH THING EXISTING except in the minds of the members of the ACLU and those the ACLU have fooled into thinking such a thing.
Ping
If the ACLU was doing its job, it would sue to stop Federal ownership of state land.
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