Judge Denies Bid to Save Nativity

[krome2ez]

Judge Denies Bid to Save Nativity

Nov 19, 2012

A federal judge on Monday denied a Christian group’s bid for a preliminary injunction to force Santa Monica to allow the display of a Nativity Scene — leading critics to fear the ruling could jeopardize religious liberty.

U.S. District Court Judge Audrey Collins formalized an earlier tentative ruling during a hearing.

William Becker, the attorney for the Christian group, told Fox News that it was an “extraordinary ruling.”

“The next step will be for them to stop any religious speech at all in a public park — whether it’s singing hymns or merely handing out leaflets or merely discussing religion,” he said. “One day it will all be banned.”

Santa Monica Nativity

Christmastime Nativity scenes had been erected in Palisades Park for decades. Last year, atheists overwhelmed the city’s auction process for display sites, winning 18 of 21 slots and triggering a bitter dispute. The city then banned private, unattended displays at the park.

Santa Monica officials snuffed the city’s holiday tradition this year rather than referee the religious rumble, prompting churches that have set up a 14-scene Christian diorama to sue over freedom of speech claims.

“It’s a sad, sad commentary on the attitudes of the day that a nearly 60-year-old Christmas tradition is now having to hunt for a home, something like our savior had to hunt for a place to be born because the world was not interested,” Hunter Jameson, head of the nonprofit Santa Monica Nativity Scene Committee, said in advance of the hearing.

The atheists were not parties to the legal case. Their role outside court highlights a tactical shift as atheists evolve into a vocal minority eager to get their non-beliefs into the public square as never before.

National atheist groups earlier this year took out full-page newspaper ads and hundreds of TV spots in response to Catholic bishops’ activism around women’s health care issues and are gearing up to battle for their own space alongside public Christmas displays in small towns across America this season.

“In recent years, the tactic of many in the atheist community has been, if you can’t beat them, join them,” said Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center and director of the Newseum’s Religious Freedom Education Project in Washington. “If these church groups insist that these public spaces are going to be dominated by a Christian message, we’ll just get in the game — and that changes everything.”

In the past, atheists primarily fought to uphold the separation of church and state through the courts. The change underscores the conviction held by many nonbelievers that their views are gaining a foothold, especially among young adults.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released a study last month that found 20 percent of Americans say they have no religious affiliation, an increase from 15 percent in the past five years. Atheists took heart from the report, although Pew researchers stressed that the category also encompassed majorities of people who said they believed in God but had no ties with organized religion and people who consider themselves “spiritual” but not “religious.”

“We’re at the bottom of the totem pole socially, but we have muscle and we’re flexing it,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation. “Ignore our numbers at your peril.”

With reporting from Associated Press

http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/judge-denies-bid-to-save-nativity.html

[KiaKaha]

How very sad to witness the wheat being sifted from the chaff.

KK

MADD for Heather

[SgtFuryUSCZ]

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If you're an Athiest who is physically, mentally, emotionally harmed by a display of Faith of any kind,

you're going to be pretty busy going around removing:

Foo Dogs, Buddahs, Trees (yes, some Faiths have these as icons), Stars of David from Synagogues, Crosses from atop Churches, Ankh symbols, Snakes, rocks, bushes (burning or otherwise), and every other thing on earth that some Faiths recognise.

Athiests... NOW do you see how stupid and irrelevant your request is.

And any entity that recognizes your rights to eliminate it all is even more ignorant.

[Shabibilicious]

****////

If you're an Athiest who is physically, mentally, emotionally harmed by a display of Faith of any kind,

you're going to be pretty busy going around removing:

Foo Dogs, Buddahs, Trees (yes, some Faiths have these as icons), Stars of David from Synagogues, Crosses from atop Churches, Ankh symbols, Snakes, rocks, bushes (burning or otherwise), and every other thing on earth that some Faiths recognise.

Athiests... NOW do you see how stupid and irrelevant your request is.

And any entity that recognizes your rights to eliminate it all is even more ignorant.

I say move Santa's play house (every town has one this time of year) right behind the nativity, add a cross to the roof, and lease a parcel of land around the whole thing to a local church, for a buck. Wa la.....church yard. End of story.

GO RV, then BV

[PowerGeneration]

Well What do you expect its santa monica its mostly all *** anyway it goes against there

rights to have sweet brown rump dumplings.They probably shop at abominations are us

for there kind of toys.

But if you looked into each of there homes they will have a christmas tree standing

where you can see it through the window.

Butt thats there choice, To throw out the baby Jesus my King and Savior.

What is the world coming to? The End is what its coming to.