Posted on 09/13/2003 2:59:18 PM PDT by Liz
The Ten Commandments stone is across the street from City Hall. (Joshua Brown/Special to The Tribune) By Mark Eddington The Salt Lake Tribune
PLEASANT GROVE -- While their resolve is not set in stone, Pleasant Grove leaders are firm about their intent to keep a Ten Commandments monument on city property.
Even if Salt Lake City attorney Brian Barnard sues the Utah County city, community leaders say they would rather fight than switch locations -- provided they have legal grounds and financial backing.
"At this point, we are looking to fight," said Pleasant Grove Mayor Jim Danklef. "I think it's good to stand up and say you are not going to move [the monument] off just because someone says you have to."
Barnard, legal counsel for the Society of Separationists, has threatened legal action against Pleasant Grove unless the monument is removed from a city park at 100 North and 100 East, where it has stood ever since the Fraternal Order of Eagles gave it to the city in 1971.
City Attorney Christine Petersen says several "public-interest" law firms have offered to do pro bono work on behalf of Pleasant Grove. One of the firms, the Thomas More Law Center in Michigan, has faxed an offer to represent the city in court free of charge.
The Ann Arbor company's offer, however, would not cover any monetary damages a judge might assess if the city lost a court fight.
Petersen says Salt Lake City attorney Frank Myler, affiliated with the American Center for Law and Justice, has also offered legal assistance. The City Council has authorized legal staff to contact both organizations.
"We haven't had time to get in touch with both of them" to learn the details about the offers, Petersen said Thursday.
Neither Myler nor the Thomas More Center could be reached for comment.
Barnard, who has worked with the American Civil Liberties Union to get Decalogue -- 10 Commandments -- monuments moved from public property in seven locations, scoffs at the offers Pleasant Grove is fielding.
He noted his legal bills in Ten Commandment cases against Salt Lake City and Ogden totalled $80,000, and wonders if Pleasant Grove is willing to risk a similar amount if the proffered aid is less substantial than promised.
"If the city loses, and gets stuck with the attorney's bill . . . are those organizations going to pony up the money to pay it?" Barnard asked.
Danklef concedes that might be a problem. Still, the mayor and city administrators are heartened by the offers and by the "overwhelming support" they are receiving from Utahns and residents of other states.
The city recently received a $25 money order from the senior Sunday school of a small Baptist church in Alabama, the mayor said.
Moreover, city administrators believe their monument may fare better than the one a federal court ordered removed from a state judicial building in Alabama. Petersen said the Eagles donated Pleasant Grove's monument for secular instead of sacred reasons. Its purpose is to honor the Vietnam veterans, she said.
Barnard, however, insists the monument is a clear violation of church and state outlined in the Constitution and upheld by the courts. He asks why Decalogues need to be on public property in the first place.
"Is the meaning of the Ten Commandments enhanced because it is on government property? Does the public take it more seriously?" he asked. "God does not need the support of the Pleasant Grove government. The Ten Commandments doesn't need that support."
Pleasant Grove's monument is in an obscure location, nestled behind an antique shop and between a blue-spruce tree and a shed that served as the city's first fire station in 1906. Barnard argues Pleasant Grove should follow the example set by Provo, which voluntarily moved its Decalogue last year from city-owned Memorial Park to a much more visible spot at LDS Church-owned Tabernacle Park on the corner of Center Street and University Avenue.
Provo spokesman Michael Mower said the move, done with the consent of the Eagles and LDS Church, has worked out well.
"We were able to facilitate putting the Ten Commandments on the most prominent corner in Provo while avoiding the contention that would have surrounded an almost certain lawsuit." "America was founded on Christian ideals," she said. "If we won't stand up for God, how can we expect him to stand by us when we need him most?"
meddington@sltrib.com
© Copyright 2003, The Salt Lake Tribune. All material found on Utah OnLine is copyrighted The Salt Lake Tribune and associated news services. No material may be reproduced or reused without explicit permission from The Salt Lake Tribune.
The LDS Church built the state - so almost everything in Utah is historical.
The ACLU should be threatened with (1) discrimination, (2) hate crimes, and, (3) inflcting emotional distress for impeding Christians' ability to practice their beliefs as they wish within First Amendment guarantees.
One FR suggestion is that if a judge considers the Ten Commandments are the basis of our law in Western Culture, then he/she can cite the applicable provision in a written decision AND get it into the system. Laws like (1) Murder, (2) Theft, (3) Adultery, (4) Coveting (in sex harrassment or stalking case).
If that happened, the hate-filled ACLU would be forced to disavow a huge body of law that is analogous to the Ten Commandments.
However, I fear the Christian-hating ACLU and its partners in crime --- People for the American Way, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, American Atheists, Humanist Association, Planned Parenthood, etc --- would not hesitate to do this b/c at the heart of this Fifth Column's activities is a cynical scheme to undermine and weaken the US.
The Fifth Column haters haven't yet been emboldened enough to actually say that they despise religion and loathe the people who practice religion (but that could change). They usually offer some high-falluting, elliptical legal argument to snatch the Ten Commandments, prayers, religious symbols, and creches from so-called "public" places. Their arguments are always offered in unemotional voices, which unfortunately makes the hate-filled devils believable.
We are witnessing the last vestiges of liberal-imposed "moral-neutrality".......the non-judgemental culture devoid of oppobrium against wrongdoing. Sicko libs get off on moral relativity that obliterates the clear line between right and wrong. How else could the conniving Clintons and their acolytes have gotten away with all their crimes?
The hidden agenda of the religio-phobic ACLU, and its partners despite their high-sounding legal arguments, is to decimate all references to morality b/c in their small, inferior, insular minds morality equates to dreaded sectarian religious beliefs.
How very successful they have been. Everyday we see the moral relativity agenda's outcome as we experience the unimaginable crimes and the collapse of a once-thriving culture's moral underpinnings.
Went out of style in the 1840s'. After we won the Mormon rebellion, State supported Churhes went out of style, thank Dan Webster.
The key phrase in the 14th Amendemnt is equal protection. At issue here is that the gov't (the courts) cannot establish different standards of Constitutional law.....one for believers and another for non-believers.
Moreover, the crucial Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments) guarantees, by the first and tenth amendments, "the right of the people in and through their states and state governments to reverence God according to their constitutionally determined choice, that is by the vote of the majority in their state."
This is the stuff I hate so much. The monument stood there for over thirty years and no one cared. NOW, due to the ACLU-backed anti-God campaign, EVERY ONE is a target. GRRRRRR.
They may be able to keep it on historical grounds, and if it's stood there uncontested for thirty years, WHY NOW? is a valid legal argument.
Oh yes, considerably better legal argument then Moore's: donated by a third party (unlike Moore's) AND a veterans' memorial.
It's as if they're vampires who just got out of their coffins, roamed the land looking to destroy all that's good, and pounced on the tablet.
This is a crude attempt to remove our country's heritage.
Just because I may not profess to an organized religion...does not mean that our Founding Fathers' object of freedom, should be shunted aside for a complete expletion of religious faith.
I grew up with the Commandments as a good rule of thumb.
I want to say "God Help Us"!!!!..but then again...I'm an agnostic.
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