City support of monument does hurt

I would like to ask letter writer Susie Russell-Melendez who she thinks she is to judge whether the Ten Commandments monument is hurting anyone (“Monument isn’t hurting anyone,” Nov. 1).

The decision of the Everett City Council to fight to keep the monument on city property is hurting the taxpayers. Our First Amendment (if anyone actually ever bothers to read the Constitution) guarantees the freedom of religion. Freedom of religion can only be protected if the state takes a stand of neutrality where religion is concerned. The state cannot impose any religious views on the citizens. Once it does, freedom of religion no longer exists. In case after case in this country, cities that have chosen to fight such lawsuits have lost, because thankfully judicial bodies have ruled that such artifacts on public property are unconstitutional.

Let me also address some of the hypocrisy in Ms. Russell-Melendez’s letter. The men and women in our armed services are not fighting to protect the “word of God.” They are fighting to protect the United States, and subsequently the values that we hold as American citizens. One of those values is to worship (or not) as we please. Has she considered that the Muslims, Jews and members of other religions, or atheists even, might take great offense at her implications as to what they are fighting for? If Ms. Russell-Melendez cares to review any of the writings in which the Founding Fathers interpret the documents that they forged in the creation of the United States, she will find repeated references to the United States not holding to any Christian ideals other than those which coincidentally were common to the Constitution. Even Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, said that we were not a Christian nation.

Anyone who supports the maintenance of the Ten Commandments on city property by taxpayers is doing so out of ignorance of the Constitution. Not that that ever stopped anyone before.

Jason Call

Everett