A tiny sect demands its place in the park

In high court, a clash over public space

PLEASANT GROVE CITY, UTAH -- Across the street from the city hall here sits a small park with about a dozen donated buildings and objects -- a wishing well, a millstone from the city's first flour mill and an imposing red granite monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments.

Thirty miles to the north, adherents of a religion called Summum gather in a wood and metal pyramid hard by Interstate 15 in Salt Lake City. Followers of Summum meditate on their Seven Aphorisms, fortified by an alcoholic sacramental nectar they produce and surrounded by mummified animals.

In 2003, the president of the Summum church wrote to the mayor of Pleasant Grove City with a proposal: The church wanted to erect a monument in the city park inscribed with the Seven Aphorisms, "similar in size and nature" to the one devoted to the Ten Commandments.

The city declined, a lawsuit followed and a federal appeals court ruled that the First Amendment required the city to display the Summum monument. The Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear arguments in the case, which could produce the most important free speech decision of the term.

The justices will consider whether a public park open to some donations must accept others as well. In cases involving speeches and leaflets, the courts have generally said that public parks are public forums where the government cannot discriminate among speakers on the basis of what they propose to say. The question of how donated objects should be treated, however, is an open one.

'Saying similar things'

Inside the pyramid, sitting on a comfy white couch near a mummified Doberman named Butch, Ron Temu, a Summum counselor, said the two monuments would complement each other.

"They've put a basically Judeo-Christian religious text in the park, which we think is great, because people should be exposed to it," Temu said. "But our principles should be exposed as well."

Su Menu, the church's president, agreed. "If you look at them side by side," she said of the two monuments, "they really are saying similar things."

For example: The Third Commandment is "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." The Third Aphorism is "Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates."

Michael W. Daniels, the mayor of Pleasant Grove City, is not the vibrating sort.

Sitting with the city attorney in a conference room in city hall, Daniels deftly drew several fine lines in explaining why the city could treat the two monuments differently.

Only donations concerning the city's history are eligible for display in the park as a matter of longstanding policy, he said, and only when donated by groups with a long association with the city. The Fraternal Order of Eagles, a national civic organization, donated the Ten Commandments monument in 1971.

The donations, Daniels went on, are transformed when the city accepts them. "Monuments on government property become government speech," he said.

Under the First Amendment, the government can generally say what it likes without giving equal time to opposing views; it has much less latitude to choose among private speakers.

Asked what the government is saying when it displays the Ten Commandments, Daniels talked about law and history. He did not mention religion.

Pressed a little, he retreated.

"The fact that we own the monument doesn't mean that what is on the monument is something we are espousing, promoting, establishing, embracing," he said. "We're looking at, does it fit with the heritage of the people of this area?"

Brian M. Banard, a lawyer for the Summum church, said the city's distinctions were cooked up after the fact as a way to reject his client's monument. The local chapter of the Eagles, he added, had only been in town two years when it donated the Ten Commandments monument. It stands in Pioneer Park, which pays tribute to the city's frontier heritage, one that is mostly Mormon.

The two sides differ about how best to honor that heritage.

"We have a city that will allow one organization to put up its religious ideals and principles," Barnard said. "When the next group comes along, they won't allow it to put up its religious ideals and principles."

Last year, the federal appeals court in Denver sided with the Summum church and ordered Pleasant Grove City to display their monument.

Although the case appears to present questions under the First Amendment's ban on government establishment of religion, the appeals court said the case is properly analyzed under the amendment's free-speech protections. That distinguishes it from most cases concerning the display of nativity scenes and the like on government property.

A cluttered future?

The city, supported by more than 20 cities and states, along with the federal government, has told the Supreme Court that the upshot of affirming the appeals court decision would be to clutter up public parks across the nation with offensive nonsense.

A town accepting a 9/11 memorial would also have to display a donated tribute to al-Qaida, the briefs said. "Accepting a Statue of Liberty," the city's brief said, should not "compel a government to accept a Statue of Tyranny."

The brief for the Summum church said the relevant dispute is much narrower. "The government," the brief said, "may not take sides in a theological debate."