Roadside cross in Salem unconstitutional, says Freedom From Religion Foundation

There's a roadside memorial in the town where I live (Salem, Oregon) that features a four-foot cross. I have no problem with temporary displays of grief after someone has been killed in a traffic accident, but this memorial has been on Kuebler Boulevard for at least ten years.

That's way too long. It needs to go.

So says the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which has written Salem Mayor Chuck Bennett, citing legal decisions that a cross on public property is unconstitutional. 
Download FFRF letter to Mayor Bennett

Joe Douglass, a reporter for Portland's KATU television station, filed a story about the cross yesterday: "Group demands Salem remove roadside cross memorializing woman  who died in crash years ago."

SALEM, Ore. — A roadside cross memorializing a mother who died in a car crash years ago is at the center of a battle brewing over the separation of church and state in Salem.

A group called the Freedom From Religion Foundation is demanding the city remove it.

Salem Mayor Chuck Bennett said Tuesday that the city is reviewing the situation and that it's the first time they've received a complaint about the memorial.

Tucked away in some grass off Kuebler Boulevard near Stroh Lane is a nearly 4-foot tall cross sitting on a heart-shaped piece of land.

Cheryl Kolbe told KATU it's been there for at least a dozen years.

"This is not the same as a very recent car accident where somebody put some flowers or whatever or even a cross on the side of the road a week or two," said Kolbe. "The cross dramatically conveys a message of governmental support for Christianity whatever the intention of the display may be."

Kolbe is the Portland area chapter president for the Freedom From Religion Foundation based in Wisconsin.

About two weeks ago, a lawyer for the organization sent a letter to Bennett demanding the memorial be removed, saying someone in the area complained.

"The government cannot be seen as endorsing any religion," said Kolbe. "The courts have ruled consistently that a cross does represent Christianity and gives the impression of promoting Christianity over other religions or non-religion."

Here's the KATU televised version of the story:

A post about the roadside memorial story on the KATU Facebook page has gotten a heck of a lot of attention: over 2,100 reactions; 1,000 + comments; 635 shares. 

People feel strongly about the cross issue. Since most people in this country are Christian, it isn't surprising that most of the commenters have a "this is no big deal; leave the cross where it is" attitude.

Well, I wonder if they'd feel the same way if governments allowed Satanic symbols on public property for over a decade. Or an Islamic symbol. Where do we draw the line once governments start allowing people to put up religious memorials for reasons they feel strongly about?

In the video Mayor Bennett says the cross isn't promoting Christianity. But this doesn't make sense, since the City of Salem is allowing a four-foot Christian cross on a public right of way.

Look, I can understand why grieving friends and relatives may want to put some flowers at the spot someone died in a traffic accident. This should be temporary, though. Like a week or two.

After that, a memorial should be on private property. Public property shouldn't be used for longstanding private displays of religiosity. 

A New York Times piece had pro and con arguments about roadside memorials. Given my atheist approach to life, naturally I liked this man's reasoning.

Robert Tiernan is a lawyer in Colorado. Nine years ago, he represented a person accused of illegally removing a roadside memorial. His client was acquitted.

They Are Unconstitutional and a Hazard

There are three reasons why privately placed roadside memorials should not be allowed.

First, they constitute the taking of public property for private purposes.

Second, they invariably include Christian crosses and other religious symbols. This violates the constitutional principle of separation of church and state because public facilities are being used to promote religion.

Third, they are a distraction and, therefore, dangerous to the motoring public. Many of these memorials are on median strips along the highway or are just off the shoulder. They are often elaborate and include symbols that are anchored into the ground. If a motorist happens to lose control of his car and hits one of these displays, it could result in serious injury or death.

Furthermore, the fact that grieving family and friends frequently visit these memorials to leave flowers and to pray presents an additional danger. In the case I handled, the memorial was in the “V” of an interstate off-ramp. When mourners slowed down to pull off and visit the site, it created a serious traffic hazard.

Many states, including Colorado and Wyoming, have programs designed to commemorate victims of traffic accidents that don’t involve religious symbols or displays that are distracting. This is a better alternative than allowing citizens to erect their own shrines.

Comments

[Spencer Tepper]

Hi Brian
The roadside memorials are becoming a new tradition.

Personally, I believe every road should have a plaque that adds a bronze name tag as each new traffic death occurs. They can put a Jewish star or a cross, or a hand giving the finger, a turban, a gun, a car tire, a flower, casper the friendly ghost, in one box 3/4 inches square. They could use that box for a favored quote "She hated helmets",
" It was going to be this or the smoking," "Only the good die young," "Seat belts shmeat belts".

In all cases a memorial to the tragic stupidity of human driving, and a growing case for autonomous vehicles.

[777]

Therefore, The Master at the third eye is invisible for other people
Would be unconstitutional too

I would never have thought that - being very straight - I would be in Love , . . @another man
and that for > half a century

777

Then THROUGH Him all those other Masters, Sawan, Jagat, Jaimal, Seth Shiv , Tulsi, and so many more up to Melchizedek and more
They are also at Brians 3rd Eye
Let not the Salem journalist see all that . . .

[Jim Sutherland]

Robert Johnson took the wrong road at the Cross Roads with Willie Brown. The Cross has significance to many in America. A movie was made about it.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd60nI4sa9A

[Bob]

Perhaps the Christian cross is meant to be a representation of our cultural heritage as opposed to promoting the Christian religion.

Brian, would you object if the monument contained a statue of the Buddha or Kuan Yin?

As much as people may disagree, we are a nation based on Christian principles.

[Spencer Tepper]

Hi Bob

You wrote

"As much as people may disagree, we are a nation based on Christian principles."

Some of our greatest founding Fathers would disagree strongly with that statement, including Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and Thomas Payne.

"Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him (i.e. Jesus) by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being."

Source: Letter of Thomas Jefferson to William Short, April 13, 1820.

"It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it (i.e. the Book of Revelations), and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherence of our own nightly dreams."

Source: Letter of Thomas Jefferson to General Alexander Smyth, Jan. 17, 1825.

[Bob]

Jefferson opposed the corruption of Jesus's teachings by many within the Christian Church of his times. But, he had an appreciation for Jesus's authentic teachings and moral codes, and considered himself a Christian.

Jefferson wrote to Charles Thomson, Jan. 9, 1816: “I have made this wee-little book … which I call The Philosophy of Jesus. It is a paradigm of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book and arranging them on the pages of a blank book, in a certain order of time and subject. A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen; it is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me an infidel, and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its Author never said nor saw.”

[Spencer Tepper]

Hi Bob

Jefferson, as both citations alude too, and which you can read for yourself in Jefferson's version of the gospels, did not believe that Jesus was the embodiment of God, nor that Christ ever performed any miracles, nor that He was the son of God. Jefferson did not believe Christ rose from the dead, and as quoted above, thought the writings of revelation to be nothing more than the imaginary work of a madman.

He certainly would not be accepted as a leading member of any Christian church in America today.

His definition of Christian expressly deleted those things.

The current definition of Christian does not match Jefferson 's actual beliefs. Jefferson was vehemently opposed to the fundamentalist cult that has taken over "Christianity" today, as were several of our founding Fathers.

Our nation was not founded upon the principle of the Christian religion. Jefferson himself advocated strongly the separation of church and state. And he did this because of the ignoble history of violence of the Pat Robertson school of Christian intolerance that rejects, rather than embraces our brothers and sisters homeless and in refuge, but without sanctuary, from Iraq and around the world.

And sadly, this intolerance, which decries Jefferson's inclusive beliefs, which is labeled as Christianity, continues to cause the death of hundreds of thousands of people every year.

"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth."

Source: Thomas Jefferson, "Religion" in Notes on the State of Virginia (1782), p. 286.

[Bob]

The issue of the separation of church and state may have been misunderstood for many years now. Douglas Gibbs, Constitutional Historian, explains it in a blog he wrote during an upcoming election in 2010. Check it out - http://politicalpistachio.blogspot.com/2010/10/separation-of-church-and-state.html