Summum Trolls the Supreme Court

Posted by : Rev. Ouabache | Friday, January 16, 2009 | Published in

Some time later on this spring the Supreme Court of the United States will hear the rather interesting case of Pleasant Grove City (Utah) vs. Summum. For those who have never heard of Summum, they are a religious group based in Salt Lake City founded by a man named "Corky" Ra. It's sort of Gnosticism meets Mormonism meets Scientology. Weird but mostly harmless.

Back in 2003 they petitioned the government of Pleasant Grove, Utah to ask if they could erect a monument to their “Seven Aphorisms of Summum” next to a thirty year old monument of the Ten Commandments in the city park. The city, of course, said no and Corky, of course, filed a law suit saying that his free speech rights had been violated. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit agreed with Corky, stating that since the park is a public forum and that the Ten Commandment monument was private speech from the original donor Corky is allowed to erect his monument. The city appealed it to the highest court in the land which that brings us around to today.

Interestingly enough, Pleasant Grove is being represented by Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law & Justice, a right wing Christian group that often fights against the separation of church and state. I say interesting because the ACLJ is going against their usual argument that religious groups should have equal access to public property. They are actually arguing that the original Ten Commandments monument is government speech rather than private speech and that the park isn't a public forum. This means if they win there would be a precedent in the legal system saying that monuments on public property are government speech and every single Ten Commandments monument in America would be subject to removal.

However, if Summum wins it could also be a huge win for all minority religions and irreligions. All public property that currently has a religious monument on it could be considered an open forums that would have to accept almost any religious monument. Discordians could argue for a monument to the Law of Fives. The Pastafarians could argue for even more Flying Spaghetti Monster statues. Atheist could ask for a monument to... um... nothing? It would be just like the chaos in the Washington state capitol last December times several thousand. Sounds like a great idea for a GASM to me.

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