{"id":14009,"date":"2007-12-22T10:00:18","date_gmt":"2007-12-22T15:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14009.html"},"modified":"2007-12-22T10:00:18","modified_gmt":"2007-12-22T15:00:18","slug":"up-on-the-rooftop-is-a-constitutional-violation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/up-on-the-rooftop-is-a-constitutional-violation\/","title":{"rendered":"Up on the rooftop is a constitutional violation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by Morbo<\/a><\/p>\n

This will be my last chance to pop off on the “War on Christmas” this year, and I don’t intend to miss it.<\/p>\n

People in Green Bay, Wis., must be either amused or disgusted by the antics of their city council. Chad Fradette, council president, erected a nativity scene<\/a> on an overhang at the city hall’s entrance because he wanted to show solidarity with the residents of Peshtigo, after the Freedom From Religion Foundation warned officials there to stop displaying a creche on public property.<\/p>\n

Of course the Supreme Court has made it clear that these types of stand-alone religious displays are unconstitutional at the seat of government, so Fradette’s actions created an open forum for other displays. Sure enough, requests came pouring in.<\/p>\n

A Wiccan group provided its symbol, a Pentacle, surrounded by a wreath. Not long after it was put up, some moron waited until the cover of night, climbed up to the overhang and threw down the wreath. The Wiccans sent a replacement, but municipal officials refused to put it back up.<\/p>\n

Other requests have come in from Unitarians, Hindus and Buddhists. I realize that some groups are putting in requests just to make the point that government must treat religions equally. Most Unitarians, generally speaking, are advocates of church-state separation and don’t seek to have the state display their symbols.<\/p>\n

In an effort to sort things out, the council met Dec. 18 and promptly made things worse. They voted 6-7 to keep the creche up but exclude all other symbols<\/a> — a clearly unconstitutional move. Brilliant, guys! Why not just hang a “Sue us now!” sign on the front door?
\n
\nHow did Green Bay get in this mess? Fradette was angry because he feared that the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which is based in Wisconsin’s capital, was trying to impose “Madison values” on smaller, god-fearing communities. He told one newspaper<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“I’m trying to take this fight to the people who need to be fought. I’ll keep going on this until this group imposing Madison values crawls back into its hole and never crawls out.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How lovely. Fradette threw a fit, and the end result was this legal quagmire. Let this be a lesson to government officials: Temper tantrums rarely spawn effective public policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by Morbo This will be my last chance to pop off on the “War on Christmas” this year, and I don’t intend to miss it. People in Green Bay, Wis., must be either amused or disgusted by the antics of their city council. Chad Fradette, council president, erected a nativity scene on an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}