» No Flag Freedom
Twas An ACLU Christmas »

ACLU to county: Get a Christmas Tree Or Else

Posted on December 22, 2006

Just in time for Christmas the diversity police, the ACLU, ensure Maui County’s Christmas message is secularized. The ACLU said jump, and Maui County snapped to attention and said, “how high?”

County workers raised a festive tree at the Kalana O Maui Building Wednesday with just five days to go before Christmas, after receiving a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union warning that the existing holiday display of a Hanukkah menorah was unconstitutional. The letter threatened a federal lawsuit if the display was not corrected.

“That’s fine, to have the menorah up, but it needed to be part of a holiday display that was secular in nature,” said Deputy Corporation Counsel Traci Fujita-Villarosa. “We’re just adding to the holiday decorations.”

County information officer Ellen Pelissero said the lighted menorah was set up earlier this month after members of the Maui Mitzvah Center, a Jewish outreach organization, asked if they could display it at the county building.

“The rabbi asked the mayor if he could put a menorah up and he said sure,” she said. “I guess nobody else asked. So it appeared it was an endorsement of one (religion) when it really wasn’t.”

The county had meant to put up Christmas lights this year but “they sort of fell through the cracks,” Pelissero said.

In its letter to the county sent Tuesday, the ACLU cited case law that found government displays of religious symbols on their own could be perceived as an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. But government displays that included secular holiday symbols, like Christmas trees, alongside religious symbols, did not endorse religion.

“The goal of the ACLU is not to ruin the celebration of Hanukkah or any other religious holiday, but rather to ensure that the government does not endorse the views of one religion to the exclusion of others,” wrote ACLU Legal Director Lois Perrin.

The county installed an 11-foot Monterey pine tree harvested from Kula Botanical Garden on the Kalana O Maui grounds late Wednesday afternoon.

“I just think it was pretty funny,” said Helen McCord, an owner of the Botanical Garden.

She said she scoured her private Upcountry tree farm for a suitable specimen before settling on the estimated eight-year-old tree for the county.

“The 20th of December is kind of late for getting a large tree, because a lot of our large trees have already headed off to the hotels, condos and businesses,” she said. “We had to do a lot of scrounging to find one.”

Oh well, I guess it is good that they worked it all out without a lawsuit, but I really think the only people so oversensitive and paranoid to percieve the County as actually endorsing Judaism over other religions, just because no one else asked to display anything, are people from the ACLU with nothing better to do on the holidays than nit-pick over Christmas decorations at government facilities. I might have felt differently if someone had actually complained or been excluded. I just find it interesting how ridiculously overzealous the ACLU get around Christmas time and how quick people bend over backwards for them.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

» Filed Under Uncategorized


Trackback URL

Comments

One Response to “ACLU to county: Get a Christmas Tree Or Else”

  1. Kerwin on December 24th, 2006 5:24 am

    “Oh well, I guess it is good that they worked it all out without a lawsuit, but I really think the only people so oversensitive and paranoid to percieve the County as actually endorsing Judaism over other religions, just because no one else asked to display anything, are people from the ACLU with nothing better to do on the holidays than nit-pick over Christmas decorations at government facilities.”

    I agree.

» No Flag Freedom
Twas An ACLU Christmas »