A federal judge has ordered the city of Bloomfield, New Mexico to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from city property in response to a lawsuit from anti-Christianists.
U.S. District Judge James A. Parker issued a ruling that the 3,000 pound monument violated the First Amendment because its existence meant a government “establishment of religion.”
“In view of the circumstances surrounding the context, history, and purpose of the Ten Commandments monument, it is clear that the City of Bloomfield has violated the Establishment Clause because its conduct in authorizing the continued display of the monument on City property has had the primary or principal effect of endorsing religion,” he wrote in his ruling.
The monument was placed in 2011 after the city passed a resolution allowing private citizens the right to post historical displays at the Bloomfield City Hall.
The American Civil Liberties Union sued the city to make sure the reference to Judaism and Christianity was removed from public view.
“I am surprised and had never really considered the judge ruling against it because it’s a historical document just like the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights,” Mayor Scott Eckstein said to the Farmington Daily Times. “The intent from the beginning was that the lawn was going to be used for historical purposes, and that’s what the council voted on.”
The members of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Charleston, South Carolina received a shocking awakening on Sunday morning when a man decapitated a statue of Jesus.
Witnesses say that a man with a Kobalt sledgehammer approached the statue outside the church around 5:45 a.m. and then lopped off Jesus’ head. The witnesses called police who found Charles Jeffrey Short, 38, walking near the church a short time later and he admitted to committing the crime.
Police found the sledgehammer covered in dust and residue in the man’s backpack.
Short told police that he did so because of the Ten Commandments.
“I think I used a sledgehammer to strike that statue about six or seven times, because the first or second commandment states to not make an image of a male or female to be on display to the public,” Short told officers.
Police are investigating if Short was behind a similar attack on statues last week at a different church. The head and hands of a statue of Jesus and a child were broken off and missing.
Over 500 residents of Sandpoint, Idaho took to the streets to protest an anti-Christian group attempting to get a Ten Commandments monument removed from a public area.
Most of the residents were upset that the Wisconsin-based anti-Christian Freedom From Religion Foundation, which targets Christians and Christian emblems nationwide, would be trying to come into their town and have something removed that the community doesn’t want to see gone.
“I don’t like this at all,” resident Gladys Johnson told the Bonner County Daily Bee. “There’s no way someone can come into our town and dictate what goes on here.”
The FFRF sent a letter last November to the mayor of Sandpoint taking issue with the monument being on public property. The people who sent the letter do not live or have never been to Sandpoint.
The monument was placed in Farmin Park after being donated to the city by the Fraternal Order of Eagles. The city says they have no current plans to remove it but are working with the Eagles to find an alternative location.
The anti-Christian Freedom From Religion Foundation obtained their wish and intimidated the Muldrow, Oklahoma public schools into removing plaques of the Ten Commandments that had been placed in classrooms for decades.
The superintendent of the Muldrow Public Schools told Fox News they had no choice but to remove the plaques. Continue reading →
The anti-Christian organization Freedom From Religion Foundation descended on the small Oklahoma town of Muldrow demanding that schools remove plaques of the Ten Commandments from classrooms. They claimed that an “anonymous” member of the community had filed a complaint.
What the FFRF didn’t count on was the students fighting back against the anti-Christian bullying. Continue reading →
