Freedom of Religion or Freedom From Religion

[IrishLake]

Originally Posted by knight_shadow

That being said -- is this site somehow government related? Isn't the WTC owned by a private company? If so, they should be able to display whatever they want.

My exact thought.

[DSTRen13]

If it's a government facility, I don't see why it needs to have a cross at all. You can have a memorial without bringing religion into it. If for whatever reason you just *have* to have a cross for the Christians who died, then you should also *have* to have symbols of some kind to represent the members of other faiths, as well as the atheists and agnostics, who died as well. Otherwise, just having the cross is disrespectful to the memories of all the non-Christians. I don't blame people for being upset. If one of my Christian relatives died someplace and the government put up a memorial with Buddhist symbolism and only Buddhist symbolism, I would be irritated about it.

[preciousjeni]

Originally Posted by knight_shadow

I got into a discussion about this somewhat recently.

I always ask if the people who say "just get over it" would say the same thing if they were not members of the dominant religion. There was a shitstorm when the Muslim prayer center was announced, so how is this different?

That being said -- is this site somehow government related? Isn't the WTC owned by a private company? If so, they should be able to display whatever they want.

Yes, and

Originally Posted by DSTRen13

If it's a government facility, I don't see why it needs to have a cross at all. You can have a memorial without bringing religion into it. If for whatever reason you just *have* to have a cross for the Christians who died, then you should also *have* to have symbols of some kind to represent the members of other faiths, as well as the atheists and agnostics, who died as well. Otherwise, just having the cross is disrespectful to the memories of all the non-Christians. I don't blame people for being upset. If one of my Christian relatives died someplace and the government put up a memorial with Buddhist symbolism and only Buddhist symbolism, I would be irritated about it.

Yes