An Alabama town took down a Christian flag flying over its police department last week after an atheist group based in Wisconsin threatened legal action.
Glencoe Mayor Charles Gilchrist told a local Fox affiliate the city removed the flag Friday, two weeks after the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent the city a threatening letter. The flag had been flying over the police department for more than 20 years, alongside the American flag and the Alabama flag.
“Hallelujah!” Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor wrote in a statement following the removal of the flag. “Reason will prevail.”
In the letter, FFRF said it had received a complaint from an unnamed Glencoe citizen about the flag, and so demanded it be removed. “It is unconstitutional for a government entity to fly a flag with a patently religious symbol and meaning on its grounds,” FFRF staff attorney Andrew Seidel wrote in the letter. “You must take immediate action and refrain from hoisting this flag up the flagpole at the city hall building.”
Seidel also referenced another town that paid $50,000 in legal fees before settling for half a million dollars in damages.
“That would just about ruin us,” Gilchrist told Fox6. “That’s what they do, they pick on these smaller towns that can’t defend ourselves.”
Other wins by FFRF include banning team chaplains, signs with Bible verses, and praying before games from Orange County public schools in Florida; plus getting an Ohio middle school to take down a portrait of Jesus Christ. -Daily Caller
Glencoe Mayor Charles Gilchrist told a local Fox affiliate the city removed the flag Friday, two weeks after the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent the city a threatening letter. The flag had been flying over the police department for more than 20 years, alongside the American flag and the Alabama flag.
“Hallelujah!” Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor wrote in a statement following the removal of the flag. “Reason will prevail.”
In the letter, FFRF said it had received a complaint from an unnamed Glencoe citizen about the flag, and so demanded it be removed. “It is unconstitutional for a government entity to fly a flag with a patently religious symbol and meaning on its grounds,” FFRF staff attorney Andrew Seidel wrote in the letter. “You must take immediate action and refrain from hoisting this flag up the flagpole at the city hall building.”
Seidel also referenced another town that paid $50,000 in legal fees before settling for half a million dollars in damages.
“That would just about ruin us,” Gilchrist told Fox6. “That’s what they do, they pick on these smaller towns that can’t defend ourselves.”
Other wins by FFRF include banning team chaplains, signs with Bible verses, and praying before games from Orange County public schools in Florida; plus getting an Ohio middle school to take down a portrait of Jesus Christ. -Daily Caller
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