Ok, I give -- wherever that article was referring to, the point remains is that nativity scenes in a public park are not unconstitutional so long as there are other items on display.
[size=7]I'll go back to my corner now.[/size]
Oh god, tiny print and my specs are at flippin work.
(will read tomorrow) imagine reaaly small....
Hi Osso <waving> I think you need a different forum. This is a differently oriented group, salivating (perhaps) for a controversy or a good fight.
I do wonder about displays of this and that in public places. I don't think beliefs -- written out as dogma or credos (creda?) -- should be posted in a public building. Symbolic or mythological scenes, such as the nativity one that inspired this question, do not offend me. Believers will understand the meaning of the display and be comforted or inspired or whatever. Non-believers, or what-in-heck questioners, can walk on by. Let's not sweat the small stuff.
If the display is set up by a local government entity, that is a different issue. Such displays should not be allowed. There are enough ways for religious views to be expressed by private citizens during religious holidays -- such as scenes set up on private property that can be viewed by walkers and drivers -- that fervent believers should not feel denied.
Kara, don't mind me. I follow Osso around and watch her back while I tease her mecilessly....
Rockhead, look at the top of your browser and click on something like VIEW, and choose LARGER print, should you wish.
Sorry, all, I got all wound up on that one example related to my own experience.
Obviously I was sympathetic to that example. To have parks full of everybody expressing themselves.. first, I think of central park in NYC, but I don't know CPk's rules.
This coincides with my reading an eminently boring book, to me, even though a serial killer lurks, but continuing to be worth reading re big park design and issues with it - the non fiction book, Devil and the White City, about the World's Fair Exposition in Chicago.
Some parks work by virtue of a kind of serenity. Some parks work by inclusion and vibrant busyness. Both types need life surging through them. What gets plopped down? It's tricky, who makes those exact decisions over years.
On the larger question you pose, Kara, I agree. I would perhaps just go bananas if at the end of Wilshire was .... the ten commandments, however much I agree with a few of them.
Don't go back to your corner, JPB, pul-lease.
I guess I don't directly respond since I don't know what gives when or in which place. I follow all this probably too lethargically.
Osso, I would be taken aback by the Ten Commandments on a tablet in a park. I was speaking of scenes or tableaux...symbolic settings such as the nativity creche. And I really don't know how I would feel about coming across such a scene as I strolled through a public park. It might be distracting, not a part of a natural setting. That would be the offense, not whatever the scene depicted.
If one looks at a park as a creation, a work of art, rather than a purposely created "wild" setting (which is of course, SO not wild) then the whole issue is quite different.
If one looks at a park as a creation, a work of art, rather than a purposely created "wild" setting (which is of course, SO not wild) then the whole issue is quite different.
I'll have to respond tomorrow as I need to think on the levels of distinction, and am too fuzzy to work it all out. I think what you are distinguishing are the same thing. Some designs on purpose allow for play...
But given that art is going on, is art let in??? There's the rub, or kernel.
Which brings up a recent mess about Chicago's Millennium Park..
oh, and the Mall in Washington, DC.
