{"id":8591,"date":"2009-12-21T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-21T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2009\/12\/21\/christmas-trees-s-religious-decorations-removed-in-official-buildings\/"},"modified":"2009-12-21T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-21T12:00:00","slug":"christmas-trees-s-religious-decorations-removed-in-official-buildings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2009\/12\/21\/christmas-trees-s-religious-decorations-removed-in-official-buildings\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Trees’s Religious Decorations Removed in Official Buildings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source: www.pressdemocrat.com<\/a><\/p>\n

CALIFORNIA, USA, December 21, 2009: Sonoma County’s top official on Monday ordered the removal of stars, angels and other religious symbols from Christmas trees in county buildings after a complaint that the decorations violate constitutional protections.<\/p>\n

“I understand the concern about government endorsing religion or a doctrine, and I respect that is not our role,” Acting County Administrator Chris Thomas said.
The complaint was lodged by Irv Sutley of Santa Rosa, a 65-year-old disabled veteran who has a long history of protesting the use of religious symbols in government settings.<\/p>\n

One of the offending trees was in the lobby of Thomas’ office. He said he didn’t become aware that the star atop the tree might be a problem until consulting with county attorneys.<\/p>\n

“A star on top of the tree is a religious symbol for some people,” Thomas said.
Sutley, an atheist and chairman of the county’s central committee for the Peace and Freedom Party, said he spotted an angel on a tree in the lobby of the county Recorder’s Office on Friday while gathering voter information for his bid for re-election in the June primary.<\/p>\n

He said he found other offending items in the lobbies of various other departments, prompting a meeting Monday with Thomas. Sutley said he was simply asking the county to follow the law.<\/p>\n

“I don’t believe government has the right to use tax dollars to show favoritism to any particular cult like Christianity,” he said. “It’s just wrong. That’s why we have the Constitution, to protect minorities from the majority opinion.”
The U.S. Supreme Court in 1989 ruled in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union that government may celebrate Christmas in some form but not if it endorses Christian doctrine.<\/p>\n

The court found that while a Christmas tree is not a religious symbol, it can take on that meaning if it is decorated with such symbols.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source: www.pressdemocrat.com CALIFORNIA, USA, December 21, 2009: Sonoma County’s top official on Monday ordered the removal of stars, angels and,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}