Debate over monuments bedevils town
Satanic Temple to have site in veterans park
The Veterans Memorial Park in Belle Plaine, Minn., includes a walkway with rows of American flags on either side, a UH-1 Huey helicopter and a granite monument with the engraved names of residents who died in the Indian War of 1862, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and the Korean and Vietnam wars.
Coming soon to this 1-acre park will be an unlikely monument from an even more unlikely source: a black steel cube with a golden inverted pentagram on each side and an empty soldier’s helmet on the top, sponsored by the Satanic Temple.
It will be the first monument sponsored by the temple to be erected on public grounds, the group said.
Belle Plaine, a city of about 6,900 residents, might be an unexpected spot for such a precedent, which was set off by months of debate over whether a different monument crossed church-state boundaries when it was added to the park.
That monument, sponsored by the Belle Plaine Vet’s Club, was a black metal silhouette of a soldier with a rifle kneeling before a 2-foot cross.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation objected to the display, arguing that the religious emblem violated the establishment clause of the Constitution. It maintained that the memorial “sent a message that the government cares only about the death of Christian soldiers and was disdainful of the sacrifices made by non-Christian and nonreligious soldiers,” it said in a statement.
The memorial was removed in January, but city officials were pressured by the community to restore it, leading to the creation of a “limited public forum” area at the park to accommodate it and others, Mike Votca, the city administrator, said Monday. So far, only the Vet’s Club and the Satanic Temple have applied to erect monuments. Officials from the club could not be immediately reached Monday.
“Once one religious viewpoint has imposed itself on public grounds to the exclusion of others, we have nothing but the ethical and constitutional high ground,” the temple’s co-founder, Lucien Greaves, said Monday.