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Stratton fighting a losing battle

We stand with Stratton Mayor John Abdalla’s decision to put crosses back on the village building through the Easter holiday – a holiday which is religious in its very nature – though we know it’s a losing battle.

It’s a losing battle because the United States has become a multicultural nation bent on pleasing everyone. The nation once founded by its first New England-area settlers to escape religious persecution now is a place where being remotely public about religion is to run the wrath of the anti-religious.

The crosses have been on the Stratton village building for years, but a complaint by the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion organization – its very name standing the Constitutional prohibition of a state-based religion on its head – received a complaint. The organization, we’ll note, forced the city of Steubenville against accepting a design for a new city logo that would have featured a cross flying over the Franciscan University of Steubenville, itself a religious institution and a major employer, landmark and citizen of the city.

We also know that, when pushed, the demands for symbols of all kinds become the norm, turning the municipal government or state government grounds into a pile of competing symbols.

One needs only to look to Oklahoma and the battle over the Ten Commandments on the state capitol ground to see the lunacy that can result. Satanists want to put up a goat-headed representation of their leader.

Pittsburgh waged battles in decades past about nativity scenes and menorahs at Christmas or Hanukkah.

The money worshiped by so many in this nation may still say “In God We Trust,” but only so long as God isn’t represented in the town square. That might be sacreligious to others.

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