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Atheists: Utah Trooper Crosses "Offensive & Unconstitutional"
By David Silverman
I received an email today asking why American Atheists was “attacking” the Utah Highway Patrol Memorial. The email accused American Atheists of having an “issue with honoring fallen Utah peace officers.” It wanted to know why we could not just drive past it and see it as a MONUMENT (their use of caps). The writer then went on to say that it doesn’t matter if the peace officer is Christian, Jewish, Hindu, or atheist: they are just being honored.
What is he talking about? What memorial in Utah? Here are just a few news stories from when the Appeals Court ruled in favor of the Constitution:
-- Deseret News: Judges rule against Utah highway crosses for fallen troopers.
-- Christian Science Monitor: Roadside crosses for fallen Utah police unconstitutional, court rules.
-- Huffington Post: Utah Memorial Crosses Struck Down by Court of Appeals In Denver.
American Atheists does not have an issue with honoring fallen Utah State Police, Highway Patrol, or Peace Officers. One thing is for sure, roadside crosses are not the way to honor them. How can you honor a Jewish, Hindu, pagan, or atheist trooper with a Christian cross? How does that even remotely begin to honor them? Only a religion in the majority would think that no one of a different religion would be offended by being represented by the majority religion’s symbols. I wonder if the Christian defenders of the Utah crosses would mind an Ohm being placed at their memorial in New Delhi or the Koran being used to reference their sacrifice at their memorial in Tehran.
Fallen Troopers should not be “honored” with bogus religious symbols. They should be honored with an actual memorial that captures their bravery, sacrifice, and courage under fire: a monument that testifies to their tenacity and their willingness to lay down their lives in the protection of the citizens of Utah. A cross does not portray this at all and dishonors the fallen troopers by imposing the religion of the cross upon them and using their sacrifice to the citizens of Utah as a means to proselytize.
The so-called memorial (a string of crosses for each fallen officer) is offensive, but it is also unconstitutional. Not only does it dishonor their service and their sacrifice, it violates the state and federal constitutions.
This recent trend to promote the Christian cross as having “no religious meaning” is astoundingly ridiculous. To hear a judge on the United States Supreme Court say such in order to justify his position that Christianity is okay to promote, should not only irk those of us fighting on the side of the constitution, but equally irk our Christian friends. How can they not be upset at the secularization of their most prized and sacred symbol?
The idea that a string of Christian crosses is “just a memorial” is laughably ludicrous. Is anyone really so naïve to think that whoever designed and built the memorial really thought, “I will just use two random sticks. Hmm, that looks like a cross. Well, that’s okay, because I had two secular sticks in mind when I built it.” Or is someone so naïve enough to think that it was not designed with proselytizing in mind?
The Utah crosses are an affront to the men and women who serve the citizens of Utah and who have died in the line of fire. The memorial is an affront to the Utah Constitution and the Constitution of the United States.
I would encourage the citizens of Utah to ask that a real memorial be built for their fallen Troopers. There are a lot of great examples out there of secular memorials that capture the essence of a Trooper and the sacrifices they make on a daily basis defending their citizens.
-- Sheriff’s Association Memorial
-- New Jersey Correctional Officer Memorial
-- Fresno County Peace Officers Memorial
-- Huntsville Police Memorial (This one was delivered a couple of weeks ago where I live in Huntsville, AL)
Comments
Nope
The only objects on that desk that are used with regularity are the keyboard/mouse, monitors, water bottle, and PC. Aside from that there are a number of items that I keep out for ease of use. There are several pens with different color inks (red, blue, black), several highlighters of different shades, a black sharpie, a stack of sticky notes, and a pad of graph paper. Some of those items are used frequently (the pad of graph paper is probably used the most, though not daily), others are not used frequently (the most common use for the sharpie is to label disks, the red pen to edit documents by hand)
Why put it up? It is not obstructing anything, it just sits there with the rest of my pens ready for use if needed.
Not every council meeting does, but most general meetings have time set aside where members can make speeches on issues that they find important... which is the time slot he used.
Death machine? That is quite the exaggeration there. Hurricanes, which I assume is what you are talking about, are hardly "death machines". A hurricane is a weather pattern, a large area of low pressure which has high winds and a great deal of rain. Hate it if you wish... but I'm not going to waste my time hating a weather pattern.
When dealing with a game that I am not familiar with (such as American football) I generally trust the refs... and in this case I don't see a problem with their ruling. The kid was grandstanding, which is unsportsmanlike.
Not logical
but certainly OCD.
No, you waste your time hating other things.
you don't see a problem because 3 seconds is worth hating.
http://www.danzfamily.com/archives/blogphotos/07/727-ground-zero-cross.jpg
See a problem with that?
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid. - Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
no you said it
You are the one who said "leave the room" not I.
A prayer before hand isn't a debate, nor is it an argument. It has no place.
Why do Christians get a prayer at the beginning of the meeting, but not other represented religious / non religious groups? If time is to be devoted to prayer at the begining of the meeting then all religious / non religious groups should be able to have the same bit.
So you'd have no problem with your city council starting off every meeting with prayers to Allah?
I've yet to see an atheist billboard that "spews hate".
Be obnoxious in what way? One of the best ways I have found to examine my beliefs is by debating them.
I don't need a hurricane to remind me I'm human, or to remind me that I am insignificant in an impersonal cosmos... But it does serve as a powerful reminder at an emotional level.
No the people in New Orleans were smelling the backwash from their flooded sewage system. I was describing my own personal experience with hurricanes, since the house I lived in growing up was fairly far from urban areas we didn't have major issues with sewage in flood water.
I'm showing that just because hurricanes are destructive that hating hurricanes does not make sense. Hate hurricanes and you miss such moments. Hate hurricanes and they will still pass over (or not), so why waste time and emotional energy on hating?
Note that I'm not saying that people cannot love/hate hurricanes, just that it is in no way necessary that hurricanes be loved/hated.
Well I'll agree with you there! Now that I'm "smart enough about religion" to know that praying is as effective as asking Santa Claus.
I never said that I lacked emotion in "all events". Just that that I do not either love or hate everything in existence. There are plenty of things that I love (my wife and stepdaughter spring to mind) and a much larger set of things that I do not love (the pen on my desk for example).
As to hatred... I've never seen anything good come from hatred... All my encounters with it have served to show that hating a thing / person is at best a distraction and is often destructive for the person who hates. Following that realization I have worked rather hard at no hating... I'm not perfect but I've come a good way from where I once was.
I split this up
because you are getting confused on what's important.
No, you're smart enough now to realize that you were stupid for praying during a hurricane like that.
See, you twist things and make lies.
You did state it was stupid to put it in a love hate category. Make up your mind.
You were a teenager. You hated things. Don't lie.
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid. - Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
past tense
I'm "smart" enough now to know that praying does not lead to supernatural interference in events... That praying to a fictional character would not impact the events going on around me.
What exactly did I "twist" to make a lie?
I said that defining everything in existence in terms of love / hate (either loving or hating everything) was foolish. One can define things in terms of love / not love or hate / no hate (an object can be not loved, but that does not mean that it is hated).
See there you used the past tense... I've been speaking of the present. There have been things that I hated in the past, but I don't hate those things any more. I never claimed to have never felt hatred, only that I didn't classify everything in existence in terms of love or hate.
If you've felt hatred before
and you've felt love before.
You categorize now. You just don't admit to doing it because it's beneath you. You have this air of superiority that you display on every single comment you make.
It's remarkable.
"Hurricanes aren't terrible. They make me think of how awesome my life is in this universe. I like feeling small."
Come on...
You lied about prayer and you twist things like how you pray and how it's stupid to pray....into a lesson. Lying.
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid. - Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Sorry....
meant to add that if you felt those before you most likely feel them now. You hide them in hopes of not being as small as you think of others for being that way.
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid. - Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
No I did not, that was you
I said if you don't like it you can leave. You said if you don't like it you should leave.
That's not the same thing.
If you don't like something you can leave or you can sit there and not like it. You don't have to do it. That's why your argument was and still is weak.
You act like it's a force people have to contend with. It's not.
I'll wait for you to actually explain why prayer is bad instead of prattling.
You said that hurricanes are good for that. YOU DID. That's just dumb.
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid. - Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
leaving
You are the one who recommended that people leave the council chambers while the Christians in the room pray. So why not then have a Muslim prayer as well, after all Christians can just leave if they don't like it.
The question is one of access... If Christians get to have a Christian prayer at the start of council sessions then why don't Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Wiccans, Scientologists, etc... get to have a time for them to pray in the council chambers at the start of the session?
What isn't a force people have to contend with? Hurricanes? Hatred?
Prayer can be bad in context... Like when it is used as part of the opening of a council session to demonstrate Christian dominance.
I would agree that hurricanes are good at reminding us how small we real are in the grand scheme of things.
I did not, go back and read it.
There's a HUGE difference between SHOULD and CAN.
Do you really need me to explain that to you?
But your argument is exclusion and there's no doubt you will have to leave if someone prayed in the Muslim way. There's only one way to pray with them. You are arguing against yourself.
If the prayer is said, why does it have to be label Christian? Because that's the religion you hate the most? It is the one you talk about the most.
What makes it Christian?
If they are on the council members or senate then by all means...go ahead.
Context is made up. Stop going off topic.
Even when it kills people. You tell that to those that lost family members and see if that's comforting. How robotic are you?
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid. - Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Define "Exclusitory"
http://oxforddictionaries.com/noresults?dictionaryVersion=region-us&isWritersAndEditors=true&noresults=true&page=1&pageSize=20&q=exclusitory&searchUri=All&sort=alpha&type=dictionarysearch
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exclusitory
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/exclusitory
If you have to invent new words in order to make your case, I'd say that case was flaburtunalistic in nature and you should sorrify to us all for your reopnderances yammeristically.
The Democratic National Committee approves of this website.
exclusitory
Well that is rather poor spelling on my part...
The term I was looking for is exclusionary.
Which is to say that by if the government endorses prayer they are excluding those who do not pray in that way (or to that deity).
It is similar to erecting a Christian monument to honor "all those who died in WWII", since the monument is Christian it is exclusionary towards non-Christians by excluding them from the memorial.
Since it is you
Not those who erected the monument who thinks of it as Christian, then it is really your problem.
You should come to grips with the fact that you cannot apply your flawed reasoning onto something where it does not belong and expect such to go unchallenged.
It was the intent and design of those who erected the Mojave Cross, for instance, to honor the fallen dead. Like a sniveling bitch, you disrespect their sacrifice and desecrate their memory. Christianity does not take a blow in your attack because it was not even about a religion; it was about honoring the dead. Please stop being such a douchebag.
Or, alternatively, please disrespect such things in the presence of a group of servicemen so they can "persuade" you to change your opinion on this matter.
The Democratic National Committee approves of this website.
erected
It isn't just myself, it is anyone who looks at that cross and sees a Christian symbol.
If they intended to truly honour everyone then why did they chose a specifically Christian symbol to do the memorializing? They picked the symbol because they were mostly if not entirely Christian, and saw it as a proper symbol. They did not stop to consider if their memorial would truly be dedicated to everyone... they just assumed that it would be.
I would have no trouble voicing that opinion in front of servicemen... though you do seem to be implying that the proper response to dissenting opinions is physical violence. All I have to do is ask a Jewish serviceman if he would want a cross placed on his headstone by the government... or a Christian if he would want a memorial built using a crescent moon and star as the central symbol.
Maybe
If they intended to truly honour everyone then why did they chose a specifically Christian
Maybe they used the cross because in western culture it is as much a symbol of sacrifice as it is of Christ. I am Christian, a Latter Day Saint to be exact. We DO NOT use the cross as a symbol for anything.
In our religion, the cross has very little to do with Christ since how he died isn't as important as his dying. If they had had him drowned it would have been just the same.
So by your logic, a cross to commemorate an LDS service man should be insulting, right?
Finally, why is a representation of Christ a bad symbol? I thought you didn't believe in his existence so it shouldn't even bother you.
Choose
They chose the cross because they, and nearly everyone else they know, are Christians... So like most people they turn to a symbol they associate with sacrifice... the cross Christian theology states that Jesus was "sacrificed" on.
The cross is seen as a symbol of sacrifice because of its Christian nature, remove the Christian association an it is no longer a symbol of sacrifice.
So you are saying that the LDS would have no problems with LDS servicemen being buried under a cross grave marker? I also note that there is a marker specific to the LDS on the same list of "religious headstones" as the Christian Cross is found on.
Using a Christian symbol for Christians isn't bad... But claiming to honor everyone (Christians and Non-Christians alike) with a specifically Christian symbol is insulting to those who are not Christian.