Judges weigh whether 12-foot-high crosses along roadside are secular in Utah

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090310/ap_on_re_us/highway_crosses

By P. SOLOMON BANDA, Associated Press Writer P. Solomon Banda, Associated Press Writer – Tue Mar 10, 6:19 am ET

DENVER – A federal appeals court is weighing Utah's use of crosses on roadside memorials honoring fallen highway patrol troopers, trying to decide if they are an endorsement of religion or a nonreligious, secular symbol of death.

A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Monday in the case involving what the group American Atheists called "heroic-size" 12-foot-high crosses placed along state highways.

Utah's 14 memorial crosses, paid for by the private Utah Highway Patrol Association, contain the highway patrol's logo and a small plaque with a photo and short biography of the fallen trooper, as well as the trooper's name, rank, badge number and year of death.

A federal judge in Utah ruled in 2007 that the crosses communicate a secular message about the deaths of the troopers and are not an illegal public endorsement of religion. That judge cited the use of religious symbols in military cemeteries.

When I was a child taking family road trips, they always frightened me.

I don't think we have many of those up here in MN, at least I've never seen one.

we get to nail bankers up on them.

then you would think that nobody who is a Jew or Muslim or atheist ever gets killed in a roadside car wreck, wouldn't you???

:wtf:

Seriously, it's creeping Christianity trying to take over every public space, even the easements.

:shrug:

Utah - where sanity goes to die.

what is it about torture on a cross that turns those people on ? A religious symbol can not be secular by definition

secular if they don't have the figure of Christ on it. And it consists of two boards glued together.

Since when? Did the highway patrol consider the tombstone? Or did they simply reject everything but the Christian symbol of execution?

The self deception of the majority is amazing.

but this is a large part of the blue culture, anywhere in the country you go you will see memorials to fallen officers, some with religious components some without. If the soociation pays for it then i dont have a problem