Religion
Related: About this forumA level playing field sucks, doesn't it?
Gaylor and other atheists are celebrating the Santa Monica City Council's unanimous vote Tuesday to prohibit churches, atheists, synagogues and other groups from setting up nativity scenes or other displays on Palisades Park.
The California beach city's nearly 50-year tradition of allowing 14 nativity scenes along two blocks overlooking the ocean became threatened in December when atheists managed to win 11 of the 14 spaces that the city made available through lottery. A synagogue also won a space, leaving only two spaces for nearby churches, which used to have all 14.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/13/santa-monica-nativity-scene_n_1595031.html?ref=topbar
DonCoquixote
(13,616 posts)Does this also kill the non religous symbols of Christmas, the reindeer, Santa Clauses, etc?
mindwalker_i
(4,407 posts)They're censoring my speech!
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)No.
Seems fine to me.
dmallind
(10,437 posts)The evolution of these things, be it public prayer or after school groups or celebratory displays, always goes something like this:
1) Ooh isn't this nice - good friendly Christians having a public space to celebrate and promote their beliefs. Nobody can possibly find a reason to object because everybody loves Christianity.
2) Oh OK some of the good friendly Christians went a bit too far but it's no big deal - a few complaints will blow over if they settle back down to good friendly Christianity for all.
3) Well I'll be damned some people just won't let good friendly Christianity's occasional excesses be forgotten. Now we have to include these pesky Jews and Muslims and weird religions. But still we'll all settle down and both real and fake religions will have some space. Luckily still mostly Christian though - we can hide a Menorah or two and a couple other heathen fetishes.
4) Shit. Now the blasted atheists want to start spreading their lies about solstices and vernal equinoxes being the cause for annual celebrations, and asking questions about why the truth of a bearded invisible man who gives us salvation if we're good is different from the obviously mythical kid's story of a bearded invisible man who gives us presents if we're good. Do we have to let THESE buggers display stuff too?
5) Bollocks. The lawyers say we fucking do have to. What the hell did the Shysters do to earn the $650k in taxpayer money we gave them to fight this? The bastard atheists just won't let Christianity alone even though it's the one true faith and has had the public space to itself for decades. Fuck it if they get to show their stuff we can't have that. We can't let that commie evil Satanist amoral god-hating crap share the public space with good friendly Christianity. We have to ban them all and blame the godless scum for taking away our lovely good friendly Christianity from the only place it can be seen. Fuck. Now the second item on the council agenda...repaving the access roads to our city's 118 untaxed Christian churches.....
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(82,333 posts)dmallind
(10,437 posts)Imagine that. Number 5 yet again.
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(82,333 posts)dmallind
(10,437 posts)Once atheists had to be treated equally, all access was revoked. It's usually the case.
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)But it takes something like this to get the lie put to claims of "equal treatment".
daaron
(763 posts)It hurts so bad! Where does this confusion that HuffPo is a lib rag come from? It's disingenuous blatherskite.
skepticscott
(13,029 posts)equate to rational and clearheaded. You need go no further than this site..or this group...to be utterly convinced of that.