Banner debate shows just how low we’ve sunk

Last week’s debate over Bay Street banners brought into focus two of society’s uglier recent trends — out of control political correctness and our eagerness to run to the courts over every perceived slight.

The controversy came to light when a Port Orchard resident called the city and demanded it remove a banner strung over Bay Street advertising the Christian Life Center’s Easter celebration. The caller believed it was inappropriate for what he or she considered a religious message to be displayed on the publicly owned downtown marquee. The city responded by calling Fire District 7, which is responsible for putting up and taking down Bay Street banners, and ordering the banner removed.

Fire District 7 Chief Mike Brown declined, saying, “We’ve hung this sign for three years in a row and there’s been no problem.”

“It’s a sad state of affairs when someone complains about something (not) being politically correct and we have to change the way the city operates,” said City Councilmember Ron Rider.

Amen to that.

No doubt the complaining party will cite the establishment clause of the Constitution to justify his or her objections. It’s a familiar yet bogus argument, of course, since the wording of the law states that, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...”

In this case, it’s the Port Orchard City Council, not Congress, that’s making the law. You’d also need a pretty vivid imagination to construe hanging a banner for the church to mean we’d established the Christian Life Center as the official church of Port Orchard.

But stranger things have happened — which explains why muncipalities throughout the country have been forced to turn their annual Christmas festivities into “Holiday Celebrations” and the like. All it takes is one ACLU-funded lawsuit in front of one activist judge who’s more concerned with writing laws than enforcing those already on the books, and pretty soon a city finds itself saddled with hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.

So, much as we hate to see anyone give in to this kind of ideological extortion, it’s hard to fault the city council for at least considering a modification of its standards regarding the hanging of banners.

Presently, the city’s regulations limit banners to advertisements for community events organized or hosted by nonprofit groups. By that guideline, the Christian Life Center certainly qualifies.

Moreover, since the church paid a $50 fee for the privilege of displaying its banner, the city could no more be said to endorse the content of the sign than, for example, a television station endorses the claims of every infomercial it broadcasts. It is a business transaction, not a statement of public policy.

Fire District 7 Commissioner Darla Hartly argued the law needs to be made more specific, noting that the general provision permitting the city to display a banner for any nonprofit could just as easily be applied to a church as to the Ku Klux Klan.

The district’s attorney agrees. For the city to accept payment for services from one and not the other could be considered discriminatory, he said, in the absence of clear guidelines to the contrary.

It’s a measure of how far we’ve come in the wrong direction that a church and a hate group can in any way, shape or form be lumped together. But just because anyone with a room temperature IQ should be able to distinguish between the two is no guarantee a judge will.

Ultimately, we hope the city is able to craft an ordinance that allows a church to advertise its offerings as readily as any other voluntary public service organization, for example the Rotary or Kiwanis clubs.

It’s just a shame we’ve reached the point where one disgruntled resident with a lawyer can turn a whole community — and common sense — on its ear.

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