City of Chicago: “Christianity is a Cancer on the Soul of the City and We Will Have it Out!”
The Associated Press is reporting that the City of Chicago has threatened the organizers of an annual German festival, Christkindlmarket, over one of their sponsors. This sponsor, according to the City of Chicago, would be “insensitive to the many people of different faiths… [and] contrary to acceptable advertising standards…”
Was this sponsor the KKK? The World Church of the Creator? No. The sponsor was a movie studio, New Line Cinema. New Line Cinema sponsored the event (until their money was turned down because of the threats of the City of Chicago) with advertisements of the movie, “The Nativity Story”.
Predictably, the City tried to hide behind the “separation of church and state” doctrine. Skipping past the fact that the First Amendment requires institutional separation, not the purging of all things religious, the characterization of New Line Cinema as a religious institution is somewhat contrived.
Some of the movies New Line has put out include such religious classics as “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, “Snakes on a Plane”, the Austin Powers series, and “Blow.” New Line is a thoroughly secular company that produces movies that range from the pornographic, to the flippant gore, to children’s movies. They’ve decided to make a movie about the Nativity, an event that is indisputably consequential in the history of mankind no matter what you believe.
The City of Chicago could have had a problem sponsoring a festival called “Christkindlmarket” but they don’t. They could have a problem with the nativity scenes that take place in this festival, but they don’t because they include celebrations of other faiths. They had a problem that the included a small ad from New Line, who paid for it, for the movie “The Nativity Story”.
There is no outright religious imagery at all in that ad. No crosses, no mention of religion, only the name of a film the references the same event celebrated by Christkindlmarket.
There is no War on Christmas, the War is on Christians. Organizations such as the ACLU and the City of Chicago hold that they do not have the right to exist, to live their lives as they see fit, nor speak their mind in anyway where someone might overhear them. As was put on Captain’s Quarters blog, “they reject on culture in order to keep from offending others.” Diversity and multiculturalism means a certain culture needs to be purged from public view in the City of Chicago.
Even when Christians choose to create their own cities and live by their own rules, the ACLU brings out the big guns to stop it. If one in a hundred thousand pharmacists want to live by their conscience and not dispense pills to murder babies, Illinois issues “emergency laws” to stop them. It isn’t enough that 99,999 of 100,000 pharmacists would fill the script, it’s that there is one pharmacist out there who has values that need to be excised from society as if it were a cancer.
The City of Chicago’s decision has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with separation of Church and State or multiculturalism. It is censorship, pure and simple. It’s yet another declaration of war on Christianity’s right to exist.
It’s ironic that the so called “biggest advocates of free speech and civil liberties” would wish to impose their will on others to the point of suppressing other’s free speech.
It goes to show that you cannot trust what liberals claim they say their goals are.
Comment by Terry Pearson | November 29, 2006
First off, I heard about this whole thing on an ‘Entertainment’ news program during the news hour on Tuesday night while channel surfing. So on Wednesday morning I started some surfing to find out what was going on. From what I can gather, the Christkindlmarket (www.christkindlmarket.com) organizers asked the city of Chicago Special_Events_Committee to weigh in on the advertising campaign of one of its sponsors (www.newline.com). The city came back and said that the ad campaign was over the top (see ap story) and recommended that the organizers rescind the sponsorship.
When the organizers of the market told New Line of the recommendations from the City and their reasons, I suspect New Line sent out a press release and then Mr. Don Babwin of the AP wrote this story: (http://apnews.myway.com/article/20061128/D8LLRK9O0.html)
New Line made this statement posted here http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MGY1ZjFkZGFhMWIyNTkzYzEzZTYxMDQzYWViZjY3Zjk=, written in a way to incite fear of discrimination and up it’s sales.
Yeah, the City made a dumb recommendation… why did they suggest dumping the sponsorship to the organizers? Why didn’t they just tell them to scale back their advertising campaign to something less intrusive? But they weren’t out of line, they were keeping with their rules on advertising during events like these. Their reasoning initially was stupidly worded, but it was guidance that was asked for, a recommendation; NOT a demand. The market organizers didn’t have to follow the recommendation.
So who really is out to get Christmas and Christians in an uproar? It’s not the Christkindlmarket organizers, and it’s not the City of Chicago… it’s New Line Cinema, using the city’s spokespersons poor choice of words against them to create fear in a group of Christians who are looking for cases of discrimination to point out as a ‘war on Christmas.’ It is more probable that New Line Cinema intentionally orchestrated this situation knowing that their proposed ad campaign would violate the rules and get them scolded, than a conspiracy on the part of the City of Chicago to ban Christ in Christmas. Chicago won’t go there again, they did it 20 years ago and got sued. (sorry I can’t find the link right now.)
I believe that in reality, New Line Cinema is shamefully capitalizing on this situation, they are the ones who called in the media, and they are the ones who will make the money off of it when all is said and done. The city of Chicago will have a black eye and the ACLJ (www.aclj.org) will be eating crow, and no one wins except the movie executives and no Christian will again be taken seriously when they say that they are being discriminated against. There is real viewpoint discrimination going on all over the country in municipalities, but this is not it.
Comment by nicky | December 1, 2006