The ACLU treats Jesus like a sex offender on school grounds. No, actually I think the ACLU is all for allowing molesters to stand on top of the monkey bars handing out candy at recess. So actually, the ACLU treats Jesus the exact opposite way they treat sex offenders -but in a bad way.
But the ACLU has lost it. (Maybe they never had it.) The nutjobs are demanding that a cross be removed or covered up at a private auditorium lest the eyes of impressionable children at their high school graduation suffer from Jesus shock at their public high school graduation. You see, the high school holds its event in a nearby large auditorium where they’ve been holding it for 70 years. The auditorium is owned by a Methodist organization.
But shock of shock, the high school is at least partly standing up to the ACLU. Normally when the ACLU comes to town, school boards start turning on each other like the Donner Party.
Weasel Zippers reports:
A New Jersey high school with a 70-year tradition of hosting graduation ceremonies in a historic auditorium is standing firm against legal threats from the American Civil Liberties Union, which claims the event violates the separation of church and state because of the Christian-owned site’s religious displays.
For generations, graduates of Neptune High School have walked down the aisle of the Great Auditorium in Ocean Grove, where the impressive 6,500-seat venue dominates the landscape of one of the area’s most historic beach towns. Built in 1894, the auditorium is owned and operated by the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, a Methodist group that owns not just the building, but all of the land beneath every home and structure in town.
The ACLU of New Jersey threatened legal action against the Neptune school district after an attendee at last year’s graduation ceremony took offense to the building’s religious symbols and Christian-based references — among them a 20-foot white cross above the auditorium’s entrance. The ACLU asked the school to remove or cover up the cross and three other religious signs, arguing their visibility during a public school event is a First Amendment violation.
So one dude found the cross offensive and his eyes started bleeding. No? Oh he must have had a severe hive breakout? No? Oh. He was offended. Actually, he probably wasn’t even offended more than he saw the possibility of taking offense.
So let’s get this right. 70 years where thousands and thousands of people gathered for graduation ceremonies without saying a word vs. one crank who hates the poor baby Jesus. Well, it’s about time the crank lost one. The cranks have been posting lots of victories the past decade or two. It’s about time they felt the agony of defeat.
May 18, 2011 at 3:24 pm
Well, let's hope this Methodist group tells the high school to go scratch rather than cave in.
May 18, 2011 at 4:19 pm
Ocean Grove is NOT your typical town. It is owned lock, stock and barrel by the Methodists. It is still a dry town. It is also a popular vacation spot for those who want to enjoy the Jersey shore without the loud boardwalk, bars, and everything else bad about Wildwood, Seaside Heights etc…
It is a lovely, quiet, quaint town and there are signs of it's origins and ownership everywhere. Ocean Grove is Ocean Grove and most everyone in NJ knows what it is like and is all about.No one ends up there by accident, people seek it out, there are waiting lists years and years long for a unique little tent-like bungalow they have for summer residents. Those eeevvvuhllll Christians didn't sneak up on Neptune High School and impose this graduation ceremony. It's been a tradition for 70 years. If you don't like what Ocean Grove and Neptune High School are like then do.not.live.there. If you want atheistic, secular, typical beach living there are plenty of towns up and down the shore that would welcome you with open arms.
May 18, 2011 at 6:30 pm
So naming the school NEPTUNE, after a god, is okay, but a cross is not?
May 19, 2011 at 4:02 am
+1 Katie
May 19, 2011 at 4:34 am
To remove the Person of God from the public forum one must prove a crime so heinous that the public good will be damaged if that person is allowed to stay. The ACLU has inflicted its denial of endowed rights upon anything and everybody. The American Civil Liberties Union has no legal standing in a court of law simply because it has repudiated our Creator inscribed in our founding principles: The Declaration of Independence and forfeit its citizenship and its rights as had Madalyn Murray O'Hair in Engel v Vitale. The Supreme Court told the atheist "She can go her own way", "nor prohbit the free exercise thereof" and leave us to our own exercise of freedom according to what the people will. The people in Ocean Grove have spoken. It is time for the dictator to be exiled into the world of ridicule for his crimes against the freedom given to man by God.
May 19, 2011 at 9:05 am
Stay on it, Ocean Grove!
I'm Catholic, so we'd likely disagree on several theological matters, but even so, it's great to see someone telling the ACLU what they can do with their views.
Keep it civil–which I'm sure you understand–and keep those symbols precisely the way they are!
May 19, 2011 at 5:40 pm
The American Communist Losers Uriniferous (ACLU) will eventually get their Uriniferous butts kicked as soon as people realize that their is no absolute admonition in the Constitution requiring the absolute separation of church and state. Maybe that's what zillions of public court houses and D.C. buildings bear religious symbols. Ohhhh the poor Uriniferous lousers must not sleep at night.
May 20, 2011 at 3:19 pm
The ACLU comes across as a pack of wackos. I understand they refuse to hold meetings near cross-roads. I bet they indulge in the double-cross should they ever cross swords. For the moment, they are cross about a cross in a private building. Get a life ACLU-ers.
May 20, 2011 at 5:29 pm
The ACLU has become as ridiculous as PETA.
May 20, 2011 at 11:42 pm
@Anonymous: The ACLU sends it legal bill to the taxpayers and you and I have to pay to have our liberties stripped from us. Taxation without representation. Since when can an atheist represent believers, or a communist represent free men and patriots?
May 21, 2011 at 2:36 am
Anyone who denies unalienable rights to another person denies unalienable rights to himself. In seeking to remove civil rights to Ocean Grove, the ACLU has stripped itself of citizenship and forfeited it legal standing in a court of law, and is not entitled to tax payers' money because denying civil unalienable rights to another person is not a civil rights case but tyranny.
May 21, 2011 at 5:37 pm
Only citizens are allowed in a civil court. The ACLU does not have special privileges to repudiate any sovereign person’s citizenship while retaining its own citizenship. A citizen has a First Amendment right to express himself in thought, word or deed and or symbols. The sign of the cross is a symbol, sign language to express a sovereign person's First Amendment right to petition God for Divine Providence mentioned in our Declaration of Independence twelve years before our Constitution.