A U.S. District Court in January of 2010 ruled against dancers at the Memorial stemming from a 2008 arrest. The dancers had sued the National Park Service; it had dropped its charges of demonstrating without a permit and interfering with an agency function.
The federal lawyers wrote: “The Memorial is akin to a temple or a shrine (both in terms of its purpose and its physical characteristics), not a place of public expression.” They wrote: “The Memorial is, has long been, and is intended to be a place of calm, tranquility, and reverence—a place where visitors can go to celebrate and honor Jefferson and enjoy and contemplate the Memorial itself without the distraction of public demonstrations and other expressive activities.” The lawyer for the dancers wrote that they were dancing to honor “the individualist spirit for which Jefferson is known.”
If the Memorial is a secular church, who can rightfully say that the people who built it and whose taxes support the government cannot, in a democracy, honor (or “worship”) the government’s saints in a manner of their own choosing? What authority has a right to proclaim that quiet reverence is the only allowable method of worship? Is there freedom of expression of one’s secular religion or is there not? Who can find a reason why it is right to support the quiet worship of some people at all times and never allow music and dancing as forms of expression and support of other people at other times? In real churches, we find all sorts of expression including dance, singing, clapping, shouting, call and response, improvisation, and so on. The churches of the state demand silent obedience. Get down on your knees and bow your heads to your human masters.
Lew, you will enjoy Earth vs. The Flying Saucers. At the end of this classic sci-fi movie, the saucers do a thorough job of crashing into the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument, among other buildings. It’s as good, in its own way, as the scene where Charlton Heston encounters the fallen Statue of Liberty in Planet of the Apes.
I can’t leave this post without remarking that Lew hit the nail squarely on the head when he described these memorials as “pagan temples to the goddess USA,” etc. He did not know those words written by those U.S. Justice Department lawyers that say the Jefferson Memorial is akin to a temple or shrine.
