On California coast, atheists nudge out Nativity scenes
Michael Martinez and Zohreen Adamjee ("CNN," December 23, 2011)
Los Angeles, USA - Every Christmas for the past 60 years, Nativity scenes
have dominated two blocks of a park on bluffs overlooking the ocean in Santa
Monica, California.
The 14 scenes depicting Jesus Christ's birth have long been a popular
attraction among area residents and tourists to the southern California city.
This year, however, atheists have taken over most of the two-block stretch,
nearly shutting out and angering a group of churches who contend the
atheists have organized against the Christians and gamed a city lottery
process
allocating the holiday exhibit space.
In response, a leader of the atheist group says he's just looking for
evenhanded treatment to present his beliefs in a public space -- and goes so
far
as to say that the city shouldn't even be allowing any religious or even
atheist expression in the park.
That's why he and his group have put nothing on half of the park exhibit
spaces that they've secured from the city this year.
The atheists are declaring the politically left-leaning seaside town of
Santa Monica as their latest battleground in a national movement to assert
their rights.
"I'm part of a growing movement in America of atheists standing up for th
eir rights. It's a very exciting time for us that we're having more of an
impact in our society," said Damon Vix, the organizer of the atheist group.
"I'm a civil rights activist, and atheists have been discriminated against
for as long as I've been an atheist -- since high school," added Vix, 43, a
freelance prop maker who lives in Burbank, California.
But Hunter Jameson, the Nativity scene committee chairman representing 14
Santa Monica groups that are mostly churches, said the church members are
now planning to petition the city in 2012 to change the process so that
creches would be better represented on the park bluffs adjacent to downtown
Santa Monica.
"There's a very militant atheist movement that's trying to drive out
vestiges of the truth. They're trying to deny the truth that this nation is
founded on Christian principles," Jameson said.
"These people, atheists, a number of them, like Mr. Vix, are bound and
determined to drive away from any public place any manifestation that Americans
are God-loving people," Jameson added. "This is not fair, this is not
just."
The atheists group won from the city 18 of the 21 exhibit spaces -- leaving
only two plots to the Christian churches and one to a rabbi erecting a
Menorah scene. The venue is Palisades Park, with vistas of the Santa Monica
Pier and, in the distance, the coastal mountains of Malibu.
"We don't object to them being there. We just object to them manipulating
the rules, to try to deprive us of our freedom of speech," Jameson said.
"You add everything together, there would be enough room in the two blocks to
take care of all the displays. It's a matter of portioning the space
fairly, and we are undertaking a petition drive."
Caught in the middle of the dispute are city officials, who say the lottery
process is governed under federal law, and there's nothing they can do
about this year's results.
What enabled the atheists to garner the vast majority of the park's exhibit
space is they loaded up the applicant pool by constituting 11 of the 13
applications, according to the atheist group. The other applicants were for
the Menorah scene and the Nativity scene.
Vix and 10 Los Angeles area friends he recruited make up the 11-member
alliance, though three of them aren't atheist but agreed to join because they
don't agree with the city's policy of supporting religious displays, Vix
said.
When names were drawn, one of the atheists' names came up first, and he
claimed a maximum nine exhibit spaces, followed by the rabbi who asked for
one, and then another atheist who secured nine more, city officials said.
When Jameson's name came, only two spaces were left, and he took both of
them, city officials said.
"The first thing to make clear is that the whole process is governed by
federal law that has designated public parks as public forums. In these public
forums, individuals have maximum protection," said Barbara Stinchfield,
Santa Monica's director of community and cultural services.
"In the past we've been able to accommodate everyone who has applied. This
year, instead of the three requests, we've had (13) requests, whose total
request for spaces exceeded the spaces we've had. So we had to develop a
system to allocate the space that wasn't governed by the content of the
display because the First Amendment protects them," she said.
"We literally pulled names out of a basket and started assigning spaces
until all the spaces were allocated," Stinchfield said.
The church groups are using their two spots to display three creches.
"We didn't evaluate the content of displays in making the decision of who
got the spaces," Stinchfield said.
Jameson, the Nativity scene committee chairman, said the church groups are
upset that the atheists don't live in Santa Monica, though Vix said he has
worked there and that he and his friends visit and shop there. Jameson
doesn't live in Santa Monica either, but he attends church there, he said.
"The gist of it is that out-of-town atheists are attempting to hijack the
nearly 60-year-old Santa Monica Nativity scenes Christmas celebration,"
Jameson said.
"There is not a whole lot we can really do about it" this year, Jameson
added. "We're not trying to get rid of anybody. If we had all our displays up
there, they would take a block, and one block would be left over. We just
think that a local display deserves some preference in a local park. We're
not saying ban them (the atheists). We're just saying there should be
preference given to our local and historic display - the Nativity scenes."
Vix, who consulted with the American Atheists and the Freedom from Religion
Foundation in preparing his group's applications, has left nine of the 18
exhibit spaces blank, he said.
On the remaining parcels, Vix and his friends have installed
18-inch-by-24-inch signs that include quotes from the Founding Fathers and U.S.
Supreme
Court rulings on the separation of church and state, he said.
One sign was caged within a chain link fence -- for protection from
vandals, Vix says -- it states: "Religions are all alike -- founded upon
fables
and mythologies."
The sign attributes the quote to Thomas Jefferson, but Vix said he couldn't
verify whether Jefferson actually made that statement.
Stated Vix: "I know it's close to what he believed, and it's probably taken
a little bit out of context at most."
Another display features a Freedom from Religion Foundation banner that
begins: "At this season of the winter solstice, let reason prevail. There are
no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural
world," according to Vix.
That banner is the second one installed this month; the first one was
vandalized, Vix said.
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