From Todd Starnes at Townhall:
City-Owned Cemetery Refuses to Engrave ‘Jesus’ on Preacher’s Wife’s Headstone
The family of a Colorado preacher’s wife is still fuming after the director of the city-owned cemetery refused to engrave her final resting place with the name ‘Jesus’ because it might offend people. The city eventually reversed course under public pressure.
“We were in disbelief,” said Stacy Adams, the daughter-in-law of Linda Baker. “Who tries to censor Jesus from a cemetery?”
Linda Baker lost her battle with cancer last week. She was the wife of Mark Baker, the pastor of Harvest Baptist Church in Ovid.
Adams said her mother-in-law was passionate about her Christian faith and her family. Her final wish was to have her cemetery marker engraved with the ichthys, a symbol of early Christianity. She also wanted the word ‘Jesus’ written inside the fish.
“At first they told us it wouldn’t fit,” Adams told me. “But after we kept pushing them the cemetery director told us that it might offend somebody. They weren’t going to allow it.”
The family was devastated and asked the cemetery director to reconsider. He refused.
“He said, ‘What if somebody wanted to put a swastika?” she recounted. “My reply was, so what if they do? It’s not my business how they want to be remembered.” [Did that blatteroon really draw a moral equivalence between the Holy Name and the swastika?]
The family then took their concerns to the Sterling city manager – but once again they were rebuffed.
“He refused to work with us,” she said. “He said he would have to take it to the city attorney. They were being difficult.”
She said city officials kept telling them that people would be offended by the name of Christ.
[…]
Read the rest there.
Loading ...
You can’t make this stuff up.
Jesus is a perfectly common Spanish first name for men. Maybe the guy also happens to be a fisherman. I could see a non-religious gravestone having exactly the same image as this woman’s. Clearly, the official is violating the right to freedom of speech.
The Chicken
That atheists claim to find the name Someone they don’t believe in to be “offensive” is illuminating. “Offense” implies they felt hurt. How can anyone be hurt by hearing the name of something they don’t believe in? For example, I am not “offended/hurt” when I hear the name “Santa Claus”. I think that they must feel offended because they are experiencing discomfort/hurt – I believe that their conscience hurts them when they hear the Holy Name of Jesus/God. Otherwise they would not be “offended” by It.
We don’t know that these Sterling people are atheists, or indeed, that the atheists in Sterling are the kind that are perpetually offended. All we know is that the city officials were dedicated to the cause of not having anyone (except the family with the grave) complain. It was okay for the family to feel sad and complain, though.
This is typical bad bureaucrat behavior.
The good news, I suppose, is that the short-sighted authorities succumbed to the pressure of presumably more reasonable people. Such things do, occasionally, take place.
Blatteroon. Classic!
Christ have mercy…
And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me. Matthew 11:6