The Oakland Zoo removed a monument enscribed with the Ten Commandments from its property Wednesday. days before a planned weekend protest by a local atheist groups.
Posted on 07/28/2012 8:09:18 AM PDT by kevcol
The Oakland Zoo removed a monument enscribed with the Ten Commandments from its property Wednesday. days before a planned weekend protest by a local atheist groups.
Zoo officials said the removal had been scheduled previously and was not related to plans by the East Bay Atheists and Atheists Advocates of San Francisco, which intended to picket the zoo to demand that the monument be removed.
"We had been wanting to do it for a long time," said Joel Parrott, CEO and president of the zoo. He said he began thinking about taking down the monuments when lawsuits over the religious displays on public land began arising in the early 2000s. "Now, it just seemed like it was a proper time."
Protest organizers said they were surprised at the zoo's decision but do not think the zoo's timing was only a coincidence.
"That's totally unprecedented," said Joey Piscitelli, a Martinez resident who has complained to the city previously about the monument. "They wanted to thwart the demonstrations and keep this out of the public eye."
The 6-foot marble sculpture of enscribed stone tablets has been on zoo property since 1965 when the area was a state park, according to Parrott. The monument was not near to any of the main animal exhibits, but close to the Snow Building, a facility overlooking the city that the zoo often rents out to community groups.
Piscitelli, who identified himself as a pagan, said he had rented the building and that his guests were "shocked" to see the religious display. In a letter to the city and Mayor Jean Quan in May, he called the monument "prejudicial" and said it denigrates the views of non-Christian zoo visitors.
Parrott said the zoo rarely received complaints about the monument.
The protest, originally scheduled for Sunday, will not happen. Piscitelli said the groups will be thanking the zoo for their decision instead.
It seems the animals at the zoo were the last ones in the Bay Area attempting to live by the 10 Commandments.....
Joel Parrott, CEO and president of the zoo
What an appropriately-named, lick-spittle, simple-tool useful idiot.
Don’t worry godless leftists. Eternal Zoo will have none of the Ten Commandments displays either. The reddish Zoo keeper there is a real ashole though-—have it your way and your will be done.
“I wonder where it was relocated to?”
No, I won’t say it.
These communist can remove this but God is still in control..What makes them think we will ever forget the commandments God gave us..They will one day set their full attention on burning our Bibles but then they would have gone to far..
By removing the words they think the deeds they do go away..Sorry idiot just wait when you die you will burn in the lake of fire forever and ever..
as the God book says even the rock cry out!
LOL
That looks like a giant turd with teeth.
These are sad times in the nation I grew up in and love.
Alas, we’re seeing it stolen away by the not so vast minimalist minority.
For their next trick these idiots will need to rename half of the cities in California that were named for the Catholic saints. Hah... pass the popcorn.
Starting with San Francisco and progressing through San Mateo, San Rafael, San Juan Bautista, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, San Diego, etc., etc. until you get to Los Angeles.
FWIW, I have spent 4 of the last 6 weeks in California, and it certainly isn’t the place where I was born and raised — or the place where my great grand parents pioneered.
Satan consolidates another city.
The people of Oakland will be on their knees begging the Lord God for help before it is all said and done. Bank on it.
The 1994 sculpture of Quetzalcoatl (also known as The Plumed Serpent) is by Robert Graham and constructed of concrete polymer. It was commissioned by the city of San Jose to honor the culture of its Latino citizens, for $500,000. Quetzalcoatl is an Aztec deity who symbolizes fertility and order. The sculpture created controversy at the time of its installation, because some citizens found it objectionable in religious, economic and aesthetic terms."
It is getting hard to win against the forces of evil.
Certainly, the city of San Francisco would NEVER remove this Buddha idol from the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park. Maybe I should sue to have it removed.
Anyway, here is the flaming atheist pagan, Joey Piss-shitelli.
http://www.atheistnexus.org/profile/JoeyPiscitelli?xg_source=activity
That is a paradox for the Cali commies. All of the Catholic saint named cities are in Spanish, so to indulge their atheism, they have to trample their multiculturalism.
Hmmm, what is an atheist commie liberal to do?
God-forsaken.. by choice. What a tough path Oakland chooses.. again.
The atheists would have loved to have dynamited it.
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