Judge to deny L.A. churches' bid for nativity scenes
In this Dec. 13, 2011 file photo, a woman walks past a traditional Nativity scene display along Ocean Avenue at Palisades Park in Santa Monica, Calif. / AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu
Last Updated 2:00 p.m. ET
LOS ANGELES A Los Angeles federal judge has indicated she will deny a bid by churches to force suburban Santa Monica to reopen spaces in a city park to private displays including Christmas Nativity scenes.
U.S. District Court Judge Audrey Collins announced her intent in a tentative ruling given to attorneys in advance of a hearing Monday morning.
An attorney representing a group of Christian churches said he will appeal. The group contends its free-speech rights are being violated.
Christmastime Nativity scenes had been erected in Palisades Park for decades. Last year, atheists overwhelmed the city's auction process for display sites.
Atheist Damon Vix erected an anti-God message alongside a life-sized nativity display in the park, igniting debates about free speech and separation of church and state.
Santa Monica officials squashed the city's holiday tradition this year rather than referee a religious rumble, banning private, unattended displays at the park.
Churches that have set up a 14-scene Christian diorama for decades sued over freedom of speech violations.
"It's a sad, sad commentary on the attitudes of the day that a nearly 60-year-old Christmas tradition is now having to hunt for a home, something like our savior had to hunt for a place to be born because the world was not interested," said Hunter Jameson, head of the nonprofit Santa Monica Nativity Scene Committee that is suing.
Missing from the courtroom drama will be Vix and his fellow atheists, who are not parties to the case. Their role outside court highlights a tactical shift as atheists evolve into a vocal minority eager to get their non-beliefs into the public square as never before.
National atheist groups earlier this year took out full-page newspaper ads and hundreds of TV spots in response to the Catholic bishops' activism around women's health care issues and are gearing up to battle for their own space alongside public Christmas displays in small towns across America this season.
"In recent years, the tactic of many in the atheist community has been, if you can't beat them, join them," said Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center and director of the Newseum's Religious Freedom Education Project in Washington. "If these church groups insist that these public spaces are going to be dominated by a Christian message, we'll just get in the game — and that changes everything."
In the past, atheists primarily fought to uphold the separation of church and state through the courts. The change underscores the conviction held by many nonbelievers that their views are gaining a foothold, especially among young adults.
The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released a study last month that found 20 percent of Americans say they have no religious affiliation, an increase from 15 percent in the last five years. Atheists took heart from the report, although Pew researchers stressed that the category also encompassed majorities of people who said they believed in God but had no ties with organized religion and people who consider themselves "spiritual" but not "religious."
"We're at the bottom of the totem pole socially, but we have muscle and we're flexing it," said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation. "Ignore our numbers at your peril."
The trouble in Santa Monica began three years ago, when Vix applied for and was granted a booth in Palisades Park alongside the story of Jesus Christ's birth, from Mary's visit from the Angel Gabriel to the traditional creche.
Vix hung a simple sign that quoted Thomas Jefferson: "Religions are all alike — founded on fables and mythologies." The other side read "Happy Solstice." He repeated the display the following year but then upped the stakes significantly.
In this Dec. 4, 2011 file photo atheist Damon Vix stands in front of a display he set among other, traditional holiday displays in Palisades Park in Santa Monica, Calif.
/ AP Photo/Scott HeadIn 2011, Vix recruited 10 others to inundate the city with applications for tongue-in-cheek displays such as a homage to the "Pastafarian religion," which would include an artistic representation of the great Flying Spaghetti Monster.
The secular coalition won 18 of 21 spaces. The two others went to the traditional Christmas displays and one to a Hanukkah display.
The atheists used half their spaces, displaying signs such as one that showed pictures of Poseidon, Jesus, Santa Claus and the devil and said: "37 million Americans know myths when they see them. What myths do you see?"
Most of the signs were vandalized and in the ensuing uproar, the city effectively ended a tradition that began in 1953 and earned Santa Monica one of its nicknames, the City of the Christmas Story.
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When I go to an aethist Yule Celebration
We don't celebrate
Wow Walmart ain't gonna like that
Taking the Christ out of Christmas is rather sad
But then some people like sad
I guess that's where Sadistic comes from
Unhappy with winning only 2 out of 21 slots from a FAIR lottery, the Christian groups accused the City of Santa Monica of anti-religion, of waging war on religious freedom because the City forced the Christian groups of having to compete with other groups for open space booths.
These Christian groups, sore losers I would said, wanted the City to set aside a numbers of booths for them.
The Christian groups' accusation backfired. The City Council decided instead of having with this BS at taxpayers' expense, they would scrap the idea of allowing groups to display unattended private seasonal / holiday theme on Palisades Park.
Drop the one in brackets and those same words could be applied toward the religious zealots who are desperately trying to keep their Bronze Age mythology at the center of our culture.