{"id":33983,"date":"2015-11-18T00:15:40","date_gmt":"2015-11-18T03:15:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/?p=33983"},"modified":"2016-11-24T22:28:35","modified_gmt":"2016-11-25T01:28:35","slug":"memorial-replaced-after-secularist-complaint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2015\/11\/18\/memorial-replaced-after-secularist-complaint\/","title":{"rendered":"Memorial Replaced after Secularist Complaint"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In Knoxville, Iowa,\u00a0a silhouette of a soldier kneeling at a cross-shaped headstone (<a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/2015\/08\/24\/another-military-memorial-under-attack\/\">previously discussed<\/a>)\u00a0was replaced with a bronze battlefield cross after Americans United for the Separation of Church and State complained.<\/p>\n<p>Sponsored by the local AMVETS Post 63, the monument was erected by Don Zoutte, who intended it to recall the iconic picture of the headstones of Normandy &#8212; not to establish a state religion:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Zoutte says he hopes the new memorial will put to bed all of the controversy that has surrounded the community over the current memorial that&#8217;s there. &#8220;It was never, ever, ever meant <!--more-->to offend anybody. <strong>I&#8217;m the one that put it up&#8230;we didn&#8217;t see it as a religious symbol<\/strong>&#8230;a warrior saying goodbye to another warrior, and <strong>not even once did we think about that as being a cross<\/strong>. <strong>It was a grave marker<\/strong>, and obviously somebody doesn&#8217;t agree with that,&#8221; said Zoutte.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Some militant atheists were so hypersensitive they were even offended by the description of the <em>new<\/em> memorial &#8212; because it was a battlefield <em>cross<\/em>.\u00a0 Either because of their threats, or because of the city&#8217;s own newfound politically-correct sensitivity, the Knoxville memorial will be the first one in the nation to <em>not<\/em> be called a battlefield cross [emphasis added]:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll have a rather unique plaque, because ours is going to say &#8216;battlefield memorial,&#8217; while every other one that this company makes in the whole world says &#8216;battlefield cross.&#8217; <strong>We were asked not to put the word cross on it<\/strong>,&#8221; said Zoutte.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So who is winning this <a href=\"http:\/\/whotv.com\/2015\/11\/11\/knoxville-soldiers-cross-memorial-will-move-starting-thursday\/\">&#8220;culture war&#8221; over religion<\/a>?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cI learned that things are way too politically correct in the United States right now,\u201d said Don Zoutte, of the Knoxville AMVets. \u201cThe rally we had almost 2000 people, the complaint we had was one.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In a bit of comeuppance, the members of the council who voted to move the original memorial were subsequently <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2015\/nov\/10\/iowa-city-ousts-council-members-who-voted-to-remov\/\">voted out of office<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-like\" data-share=\"true\" data-show-faces=\"true\" data-size=\"small\" data-action=\"like\" data-layout=\"standard\"><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"><strong>ADVERTISEMENT<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script><!-- blogpost --><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: block;\" data-ad-format=\"auto\" data-ad-slot=\"2728423835\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6450825356098669\"><\/ins><script>\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/script><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Knoxville, Iowa,\u00a0a silhouette of a soldier kneeling at a cross-shaped headstone (previously discussed)\u00a0was replaced with a bronze battlefield cross after Americans United for the Separation of Church and State complained. Sponsored by the local AMVETS Post 63, the monument was erected by Don Zoutte, who intended it to recall the iconic picture of the headstones of Normandy &#8212; not [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[60,5384,20,3677,5383,5287,522,2,564,17,10,171],"class_list":["post-33983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-americans-united","tag-amvets","tag-atheism","tag-battlefield-cross","tag-don-zoutte","tag-knoxville","tag-memorial","tag-military","tag-normandy","tag-religious-expression","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}