King officials are expected to post the proposed policy governing the flying of religious flags at the city’s Veteran’s Memorial today on the city’s website: www.ci.king.nc.us/
Under the policy being considered by the King City Council, residents can ask to fly a religious flag at the memorial in the city’s Central Park for a week to honor relatives who served in the U.S. military. The city also would use a lottery system to randomly pick the residents who want to fly a flag there, Joe Infranco, a lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund, who helped King develop the proposed policy, has said.
Infranco could not be reached Friday to discuss the proposal.
However, he said last week that the policy would allow the symbols approved by the Veterans Affairs Department to be flown on flags at the memorial.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has approved 41 symbols for faiths and beliefs that can be displayed on veterans’ headstones, said Phil Budahn, an agency spokesman.
More than half of those symbols are variations of the Christian cross because mostly Christian organizations had asked VA officials to include their symbols on the lists of approved emblems, Budahn said.
The agency also allows other emblems including the Bahai Star, the Muslim Crescent, the Jewish Star of David, the Buddhist Wheel of Righteousness and a symbol of atheists.
The Bahai Star is a nine pointed symbol that represents the Bahai faith, a monotheistic religion founded by Bahaullah in 19th-century Persia, emphasizing the spiritual unity of all human beings.
The King City Council may vote on the policy Dec. 6. If approved, it would go into effect on Jan. 1, 2011.
Stephen James, an organizer of the King Veteran’s Memorial Preservation Foundation, said that the city must decide which religious flags will be included in its policy.
The foundation was started on Nov. 8, a week after the King City Council unanimously voted to approve a policy that would eventually let a Christian flag fly again at the memorial in the city’s Central Park as a part of a limited public-forum of religious flags recognized by the U.S. military.
The government-approved “symbols don’t necessarily represent the flag of that religion,” James said. He pointed to the Buddhist symbol and the Christian cross as examples that may complicate the policy and confuse residents.
The Buddhist flag has five stripes of blue, yellow, red, white and orange strips and a sixth stripe that is combination of the previous five colors. But the Buddhist symbol is a wheel that represents the teachings of Buddha.
The Christian cross is represented with at least two flags — one with a blue field and white cross and a more popular one with a white field, a blue square and red Latin cross.
“At this point, we don’t know which of those flags (Christian flags) will be allowed,” James said.
The dispute over religious flags began five months ago when a veteran complained about the Christian flag at the memorial. In mid-August, the council and Pitt received letters from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.
Both groups urged the council to remove the flag, saying that it violated the First Amendment. On Sept. 15, the council voted to take down the flag.
In recent interviews, Michael K. Curtis, who teaches constitutional law at the Wake Forest University School of Law, and Rob Boston, a senior policy analyst for the Americans United, also questioned what symbols that the city of King would allow at the memorial.
“We have a history in America of Buddhists, Muslims, agnostics, atheists, Christians, Jews getting along with each other, and respecting one another,” said Curtis. “None of us has tried to take over the government to push our views. We are supposed to be a government (for) everybody.”
The list of VA-approved symbols includes two emblems are that not religious — for humanism and atheism, said Boston.
“Is the city going to allow these flags to be flown?” Boston asked.
jhinton@wsjournal.com
727-7299
Journal reporter Annette Fuller contributed to this story.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement