Posted on 08/06/2003 4:25:25 AM PDT by DPB101
The ACLU is looking for the ninth of the Ten Commandments -- monuments, that is.
For years, civil rights attorneys and the American Civil Liberties Union have been working to get Ten Commandments monuments moved off government property in Utah.
The organization has found eight of the nine monuments known to be in the state. But the ninth one has eluded the group.
So, the ACLU of Utah posted an alert on its Web site, at http://www.acluutah.org, asking state residents to visit their local public parks and city buildings to look for a reddish-gray marble monument that is rounded on top and in the form of two tablets.
Prime possibilities are Logan, Brigham City, Hurricane, Midvale, Midway and Tremonton. Once the monument is located, the ACLU wants to get it moved off government property.
The monuments were donated during the 1950s and 1960s by the Fraternal Order of Eagles to cities where the nondenominational group held conventions.
In the 1970s, an effort to remove them began, with opponents arguing that their placement on public property violates church-state separation.
Supporters, though, contended that the Ten Commandments displays are largely secular. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in 1973, ruling in a suit that a monument in Salt Lake City could remain on public property.
The fight revved up again in 1999 when members of the Summum religion filed a federal lawsuit to force the city of Ogden to allow them to erect their own monument displaying their "Seven Aphorisms."
The 10th Circuit ruled that the city must either allow the Summum structure or remove the Ten Commandments monument.
The ruling played into negotiations between cities and civil rights attorney Brian Barnard and the ACLU, which led to the recent removal of the monuments from public property in Roy, Tooele and Ogden.
Other cities, including Provo, moved their monuments to private property before the ACLU got involved. Other municipalities that have removed them are Salt Lake City, Murray and West Valley. And Barnard is working to get the eighth monument, one in Pleasant Grove, moved.
Many still believe the monuments should have remained where they were. "Most of the people enjoy them," said Tony Jacketta, manager of the Fraternal Order Of Eagles aerie in Salt Lake City.
"If you don't want to look at them, you don't have to." Barnard insists that he is not against the Ten Commandments and said most of the monuments have been moved to prominent locations on private land where more people see them. "If this world is a better place for displaying the Ten Commandments, I'm all for it," he said.
As of Tuesday, the search for the ninth monument had produced few leads. ACLU staff attorney Janelle Eurick said she received a lot of calls telling her where she could go -- none of the locations were where she might find the final monument. And Bernard got his share of callers. "All of them say I've been assigned to a very warm spot in Hades," he said.
I think Don Feder has got their number...
Full article at Jewish World Review:
There's nothing I hate more than for good people to step aside and let cowards push them around.
The so-called "Seven Great Aphorisms:"
Don't know why they choose to use Roman Numerals for a supposedly Egyptian list, but hey, maybe they also perform liturgies akin to Steve Martin's "King Tut"
I. THE PRINCIPLE OF PSYCHOKINESIS
II. THE PRINCIPLE OF CORRESPONDENCE
III. THE PRINCIPLE OF VIBRATION
IV. THE PRINCIPLE OF OPPOSITION
V. THE PRINCIPLE OF RHYTHM
VI. THE PRINCIPLE OF CAUSE AND EFFECT
VII. THE PRINCIPLE OF GENDER
I think ACLU should distribute decks of playing cards to the folks in Utah with pictures of the secular monuments they want the public to help them find.
Tunney's meeting with American metallurgical engineer Mr. J. Stanley McClenahan, who had smelted down six hundred thousand tons of gold, silver, platinum, brass and copper from Russian churches, is half way down the page.
While the ACLU does not profit from selling what it tears down, the ACLU is awarded court costs for what it does. Millions of dollars of taxpayer money fund these suits. Win one, file ten more--that is the ACLU way.
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