{"id":98,"date":"2009-02-27T13:12:13","date_gmt":"2009-02-27T13:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/no-aphorisms-for-utah-city-par.html"},"modified":"2009-02-27T13:12:13","modified_gmt":"2009-02-27T13:12:13","slug":"no-aphorisms-for-utah-city-par","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/no-aphorisms-for-utah-city-par.html","title":{"rendered":"No aphorisms for Utah city park"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The US Supreme Court ruled unanimously against a New-Age sect that sued to force the town of Pleasant Grove, Utah to place a monument inscribed with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.summum.us\/philosophy\/principles.shtml\">7 Aphorisms of Summum<\/a> in a city park, complementing a monument already in the park that displays the 10 Commandments. Full story in the NY Times, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/02\/26\/washington\/26scotus.html?_r=2&amp;hp\">Court Denies a Religion Its Monument in a Park<\/a>.&#8221; Wow, there are just so many angles to cover here.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>First, is it, as the NY Times seems to concede, a religion? That is, do its adherents have a sincere belief in the tenets they proclaim? Spend some time at their website and you might come away with the impression this is just a Utah version of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.venganza.org\/\">Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster<\/a>. Summum apparently offers <a href=\"http:\/\/www.summum.us\/mummification\/\">mummification<\/a> (for you or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.summum.us\/mummification\/pets\/\">your pet<\/a>), sells wine or &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.summum.us\/nectars\/\">sacerdotal nectar<\/a>,&#8221; and has built <a href=\"http:\/\/www.summum.us\/pyramid\/sanctuary.shtml\">a small pyramid<\/a> in some lucky Salt Lake City neighborhood. Don&#8217;t miss the <a href=\"http:\/\/kids.summum.us\/\">kids page<\/a>. I&#8217;m guessing this weekend small groups of Summumites will be gathering to share a few bottles of sacerdotal nectar and have a few laughs that their case went this far, maybe pausing every few minutes to throw a few more chemicals in Fido&#8217;s mummification vat.<\/p>\n<p>As for the legal case (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pleasant_Grove_City_v._Summum\">see quick summary here<\/a>), it was argued as a free speech case, not a free exercise of religion case. In particular, the Court held that the town&#8217;s refusal to host the proposed Summum monument was a permissable exercise of discretionary governmental speech which did not infringe Summum&#8217;s free speech rights. For the policy argument that seems to be the primary consideration in how the case was decided, see this Mother Jones article, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2008\/11\/summum-all-fears\">The Summum of All Fears<\/a>,&#8221; pointing out that if the 7 Aphorisms get in, so do lots of other more objectionable items.<\/p>\n<p>The case for Pleasant Grove was argued by Jay Sekulow, who is one-half of a popular Beliefnet blog. He has posted his comments on the case in a post titled &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/lynnvsekulow\/2009\/02\/supreme-court-gets-it-right--.html\">Supreme Court Gets It Right &mdash; Religious Displays OK<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The US Supreme Court ruled unanimously against a New-Age sect that sued to force the town of Pleasant Grove, Utah to place a monument inscribed with the 7 Aphorisms of Summum in a city park, complementing a monument already in the park that displays the 10 Commandments. Full story in the NY Times, &#8220;Court Denies&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":173,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>No aphorisms for Utah city park - Mormon Inquiry<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/no-aphorisms-for-utah-city-par.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"No aphorisms for Utah city park - Mormon Inquiry\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The US Supreme Court ruled unanimously against a New-Age sect that sued to force the town of Pleasant Grove, Utah to place a monument inscribed with the 7 Aphorisms of Summum in a city park, complementing a monument already in the park that displays the 10 Commandments. Full story in the NY Times, &#8220;Court Denies&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/no-aphorisms-for-utah-city-par.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Mormon Inquiry\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-02-27T13:12:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dave Banack\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"No aphorisms for Utah city park - Mormon Inquiry","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/no-aphorisms-for-utah-city-par.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"No aphorisms for Utah city park - Mormon Inquiry","og_description":"The US Supreme Court ruled unanimously against a New-Age sect that sued to force the town of Pleasant Grove, Utah to place a monument inscribed with the 7 Aphorisms of Summum in a city park, complementing a monument already in the park that displays the 10 Commandments. Full story in the NY Times, &#8220;Court Denies&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/no-aphorisms-for-utah-city-par.html","og_site_name":"Mormon Inquiry","article_published_time":"2009-02-27T13:12:13+00:00","author":"Dave Banack","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/no-aphorisms-for-utah-city-par.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/no-aphorisms-for-utah-city-par.html","name":"No aphorisms for Utah city park - Mormon Inquiry","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-02-27T13:12:13+00:00","dateModified":"2009-02-27T13:12:13+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#\/schema\/person\/2f677c4d0aa56d33221bfcb682f43c5f"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/no-aphorisms-for-utah-city-par.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/no-aphorisms-for-utah-city-par.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/no-aphorisms-for-utah-city-par.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"No aphorisms for Utah city park"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/","name":"Mormon Inquiry","description":"Mormon News and Culture","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#\/schema\/person\/2f677c4d0aa56d33221bfcb682f43c5f","name":"Dave Banack","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/7ae\/7aebc9e4453d630505d00cebd1d8aa38x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/7ae\/7aebc9e4453d630505d00cebd1d8aa38x96.jpg","caption":"Dave Banack"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/author\/dbanack"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/173"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}