Article by Mark Tapscott in PJMedia
Supreme Court Agrees to Hear 'Christian Flag' Case From Boston
Got a flag you want to display in Boston representing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime in Beijing? No problem because not a single official batted an eye when it flew from Boston’s City Hall Plaza’s flagpole.
Or maybe Fidel Castro’s genocidal Marxist regime in Cuba is more to your liking. And hey, not to worry, either, if what floats your boat is the Islamist regime of Turkey. That’s no problem, go ahead, run that baby up the flag pole in City Hall Plaza.
What’s that? Oh, well, wait just a minute there. You say you want to fly a “Christian flag”? Sorry, no can do that. I know, I know, it’s true that city officials over the last dozen years have permitted nearly 300 flags representing those three tyrannical regimes as well as a host of other countries and private causes.
That Christian stuff is different, though, so you can just forget it, buster, if you want to fly a white flag with the red cross on a blue field in the upper left-hand corner. Displaying that flag is simply not permitted.
And don’t bore us by talking about the First Amendment, and freedom of speech, or freedom of religion because this is Boston, home of Harvard and long a bastion of secular American progressivism. Power to the People! (Unless the people have faith).
But the good news is the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to give Boston city officials a refresher course in the original and enduring meaning of the First Amendment and its guarantees of freedom of speech and freedom of religious expression, thanks to Camp Constitution’s Hal Shurtleff and Liberty Counsel, the Florida-based public interest law firm that specializes in such cases.
The High Court agreed earlier this week to accept Shurtleff’s appeal of lower federal court decisions upholding Boston city officials’ denial of Camp Constitution’s 2017 application to fly the Christian flag for an hour, as 284 others have been allowed to do since 2007.
Shurtleff had hoped to commemorate “the civic and cultural contributions of the Christian community to the city of Boston, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, religious tolerance, the Rule of Law, and the U.S. Constitution.” City officials openly admitted that the presence of that word “Christian” was the basis of their denial.
If hypocrisy alone were the sole criteria for the Supremes to knock down the refusal to allow Shurtleff’s group to run the Christian flag up the flagpole for an hour, Boston’s officials would lose going away.
The official purpose of allowing various groups to display their flags in the City Hall Plaza is inclusiveness. The city’s website puts it this way: “We commemorate flags from many countries and communities at Boston City Hall Plaza. We want to create an environment in the city where everyone feels included.”
Clearly, Boston’s tolerance has room for the CCP, Castro, and the Turkish brand of Muslim Jihad, but don’t you dare try to run that cross up the flagpole.
Something else that Boston’s website states about the City Hall Plaza flagpole points to the basis for optimism about the High Court’s likely decision, according to Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver: “We look forward to the U.S. Supreme Court hearing Boston’s unconstitutional discrimination against Camp Constitution’s Christian viewpoint,” he said. “The city cannot deny the Christian flag because it is ‘Christian’ and allow every other flag to fly on its flagpoles.”
“There is a crucial difference between government endorsement of religion and private speech, which government is bound to respect,” Staver added. “Censoring religious viewpoints in a public forum where secular viewpoints are permitted is unconstitutional and this case will set national precedent.”
What the national precedent won’t be, contrary to the narrative that will undoubtedly be spread in the months ahead by the Mainstream Media, is anything having to do with establishing a “Christian Nationalism” in American government.
Here’s how Camp Constitution describes its mission:
The mission of Camp Constitution is to enhance understanding of our Judeo-Christian moral heritage, our American heritage of courage and ingenuity, including the genius of our United States Constitution, and the application of free enterprise, which together gave our nation an unprecedented history of growth and prosperity, making us the envy of the world.
We want to motivate, inspire and activate this generation of Patriots as well as the next generation of Patriots. We want to help find, develop, and train leaders in the freedom fight.
One would think that fighting for freedom would be a welcome message in the city first made famous by the Boston Tea Party, one of the most memorable events on the road that led to the American Revolution.
But that was more than 200 years ago and Boston city officials are so much more sophisticated and enlightened these days. So shut your piehole and get with the program—you know, the one praising Chairman Mao, the Butcher of Havana, and Erdogan’s Islamic “republic.”
