The Freedom From Religion Foundation is exhibiting a secular Winter Solstice display in San Diego this holiday season.
A San Diego freethinker was initially prompted in previous years to install it in Balboa Park to counter religious messages placed on public property. The exhibit will be up for much of December into the beginning of January and consists of two portions.
One depicts three Founders along with the Statue of Liberty gazing in adoration at a “baby” Bill of Rights. A sign beside the tongue-in-cheek nativity reads:
At this season of the Winter Solstice,
Join us in honoring the Bill of Rights, adopted on December 15, 1791, which reminds us that there can be no religious freedom without the freedom to dissent.
Keep religion and government separate!
The second display is a large banner which contains a secular message, composed by the late Anne Nicol Gaylor, FFRF’s principal founder:
At this season of the Winter Solstice, may reason prevail.
There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell.
There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.
FFRF would like to thank the San Diego activist, who prefers not to be identified publicly, for assembling the exhibit.
The display is up till Jan. 4.
“Religious displays can’t be allowed to monopolize the public space, particularly in an era where 29 percent of the population today identifies as having no religion,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor says. “As we always say, if a governmental body creates a public forum for religion, there must be ‘room at the inn’ for dissenting viewpoints.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with more than 35,000 members and several chapters across the country, including nearly 5,000 members and a chapter in California. Its purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
