![Judge Orders Cross Removed as PC Mania Continues to Target Christianity Judge Orders Cross Removed as PC Mania Continues to Target Christianity](https://thenewamerican.com/assets/sites/2/_img/46833/a14c445b5fe5dad3cc1583cf1217ae98-720x480.jpg)
The PC movement could almost be referred to as the “anti-Christian” movement, as it seems that the only items that liberal snowflakes tend to find offensive are Christian. Recently, for example, a Christian school in Alberta, Canada, was asked to refrain from teaching “offensive” scripture that labels homosexuality as a sin. Likewise, a Christian school in Indiana has been labeled discriminatory for failing to accept LGBT students and has been targeted by the left in a campaign to stop the school from receiving government funding. And now, the latest assault on Christianity includes a federal judge’s ruling against a decades-old cross in a Pensacola, Florida, park.
Atheists in Pensacola, Florida, filed a lawsuit in 2016 with the Freedom from Religion Foundation and the American Humanist Association asking that a 34-foot-tall white “Latin Cross” erected in 1969 by the Pensacola Jaycees be removed, Fox News reports. The cross replaced another cross that had been erected in 1941 in Bayview Park, and even U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson noted in his June 19 ruling against the cross that it was part of the city’s “rich history.”
Noting that the cross played a role in the city’s celebrations of Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day services, as well as Easter services, Judge Vinson still determined that the cross could “no longer stand as a permanent fixture on city-owned property.”
“I am aware that there is a lot of support in Pensacola to keep the cross as is, and I understand and respect that point of view,” Judge Roger Vinson wrote in his ruling. “But, the law is the law.”
Ironically, Judge Vinson even admitted that the cross does not violate the Constitution.
“The historical record indicates that the Founding Fathers did not intend for the Establishment Clause to ban crosses and religious symbols from public property,” he wrote. “Indeed, ‘the enlightened patriots who framed our constitution’ … would have most likely found this lawsuit absurd. And if I were deciding this case on a blank slate, I would agree and grant the plaintiffs no relief. But, alas, that is not what we have here.”
Instead, Judge Vinson deferred to precedent set by a court case involving a similar cross in Rabun County, Georgia.
“If the cross under review in Rabun County violated the First Amendment and had to be removed, the cross here must suffer the same fate,” the judge wrote.
{modulepos inner_text_ad}
Judge Vinson, a Reagan appointee, has fallen prey to the prevailing notion that the constitution is a living, breathing, evolving document that must mirror popular culture rather than uphold the inalienable rights granted by the Creator and outlined in the document.
And so according to Vinson’s ruling, the city of Pensacola has 30 days to remove the cross, and must pay the aggrieved plaintiffs one dollar in damages.
Predictably, the American Humanist Association welcomed the judge’s ruling, inaccurately asserting that the cross’s presence is unconstitutional. “We are pleased that the Court struck down this cross as violative of the First Amendment,” attorney Monica Miller said in a statement. “The cross was totally unavoidable to park patrons, and to have citizens foot the bill for such a religion symbol is both unfair and unconstitutional.”
Apparently only certain individuals, such as Antifa protesters, Islamic terrorists, and LGBT groups, have a right to their deeply held beliefs, as that same tolerance is not afforded to Christians.
Judge Vinson’s ruling is just one recent example of this. This week, congressional Democrats are fighting to stop schools such as the Lighthouse Christian Academy of Bloomington, Indiana, from continuing to receive school vouchers because the school’s admissions policy includes language against homosexual and bisexual activity as well as transgenderism. The Daily Caller reports that Senate Democrats cited the school as discriminatory and highlighted it as an example of why the Trump administration should not expand school choice.
Lighthouse asserts it has a right to educate its children according to its own values, noting that Christians are state taxpayers and should be afforded the option to fund Christian institutions with their money.
“Parents are free to choose which school best comports with their religious convictions,” Brian Bailey, an attorney who is serving as the school’s spokesman, said in a statement. “For a real choice and thus real liberty to exist, the government may not impose its own orthodoxy and homogenize all schools to conform to politically correct attitudes and ideologies.”
Sadly, not only does the Left disagree with this notion, but it even attempts to discriminately impose policies that violate Christian ideologies, such as forcing Christian vendors to serve same-sex weddings or mandating that Christian businesses to pay for their employees’ abortions.
And this anti-Christian PC mania is not limited to the United States. A Christian school in Alberta, Canada, has been instructed to stop teaching “offensive” scripture that labels homosexuality as a sin. According to the National Post, the Battle River School Division has asked Cornerstone Christian Academy to remove a Biblical passage that calls homosexuality a sin from the school’s mission statement.
Strangely, the Left’s issue with Christianity’s opposition to homosexuality seems to all but disappear when it comes to the Islamic faith, which in some Islamic countries translates to throwing homosexuals off of rooftops as punishment for living in sin. So while the PC movement targets Christianity, it stops short at Islam, bending over backwards in some cases to claim that radical Muslims that subscribe to these beliefs are an insignificant minority, despite evidence to the contrary. According to a survey by the Center for Security Policy, for example, nearly 25 percent of American Muslims agree that violence is an appropriate response to those who insult Islam, and 51 percent believe that “Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to shariah” — the very same law that authorizes oppression against women, beheading of individuals who dare to draw Muhammad, and the extermination of the Jewish population and homosexuals.
Furthermore, while the Left feels Christians are not entitled to stay true to their convictions against homosexuality, they seem to take no issue when homosexuals do the same against Christian customers. In 2014, Shoebat.com conducted a small experiment in which it asked 13 prominent pro-gay bakers to create a cake that read “Gay Marriage is Wrong.” All of the bakers reacted by refusing the request, and many used insults, obscenities, and profanities against Christians. No mainstream media outlet or left-wing ideologue cried discrimination, however.