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Cross on a hill
April 20, 2006Before I get raked over the coals in your minds....know that I am a Christian.
But I agree with the city in taking down the cross from the top of the dirt hill in Lake Wichita Park and I think the responsible thing for the lady and her youth group to do is fess up to it.
I'm still not entirely sure which side of the fence I'm going to fall on this one.
Reguardless of the intention of the act, altering publicly owned property can't be allowed.
A bunch of the letters to the editors keep bringing up the First Amendment and the rights. I'm a huge freedom of speech fan, being a journalist.....
You can hang an effigy of the president on your porch, but you can't spray paint Bush underneath a stop sign. You can have as many crosses as you want in your front yard, but you can't put one in a city park.
I'm sorry....rules are rules. And I think the real lesson for those kids is to understand why it was wrong to do that.
All that being said.....you have to look no further than the Texas panhandle to see an example of what can be done on private property reguarding religious views.
The 190-ft. white cross near Groom, TX can be seen for 25 miles (probably more on a clear day). You definetly don't need binoculars to see it. The entire site is a monument to Jesus's death. It is the second-largest cross in the Western Hemisphere.
Right off of I-40...one of the busiest highways in the country. Talk about forcing your views on people. The closer you get, the more you can't ignore looking at it.
BUT....it was built on private property in 1995. Private land. People refer to it as the Groom Cross....but it's not in Groom. It's not on city-owned park land. That's why it's okay.
The kids had the right idea in doing this....they were just misguided about how and where.
Posted by Jason Palmer at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
