November 11, 2002
Baptists take opposing sides in Utah free-speech case
___By Robert Marus
___ABP Washington Bureau
___SALT LAKE CITY (ABP)--A city block at the center of the Mormon universe now stands at the center of a legal dispute pitting claims of religious liberty against the freedom of speech.
___A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Salt Lake City officials violated the First Amendment by selling a section of a downtown street to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for use as a religious park. Terms of the sale said the area would remain accessible to the public but allowed church officials to regulate speech, such as distribution of anti-Mormon literature, on the site.
___The case could go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. It has created strange bedfellows. A Southern Baptist minister and the American Civil Liberties Union join on one side, saying the sale terms violate free speech. A Baptist state convention joins the Mormons on the other, contending that churches have the right to remove protesters from their property.
___The pedestrian plaza formerly was a block of Salt Lake City's Main Street that divided the church's main administration complex from the historic Mormon Temple and other religious sites. The city sold the block to the church in 1999. Today it is a pedestrian plaza featuring religious statues, plants, benches and a reflecting pool.
___An easement retained by the city, however, allowed the general public access to the site after the sale. When city officials and church officials later drew up the official deed, they added language clarifying that public access did not include making the site a forum for free speech.
___But the 10th Circuit panel ruled in October that parts of the plaza that were once city sidewalks remain a "traditional public forum" for speech.
___"The purpose of the easement is to provide a pedestrian throughway that is part of the city's transportation grid, and in this respect it is identical to the purpose the sidewalks along that portion of Main Street previously served," the judges said.
___But the Mormon Church, which owned the land before the city obtained an easement in the first place, said the plaza no longer resembles a city street and therefore is not a public forum.
___Fifteen religious groups filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the Mormons' claim. They include the Colorado Baptist General Convention, the United Methodist Church and the Islamic Society of Colorado Springs.
___The brief says the three-judge panel's ruling endangers religious liberty because it opens the door to forcing churches to open their private property "for antagonistic demonstrations and marches."
___That is misdirected concern, Southern Baptist minister Kurt Van Gorden said in a telephone interview from his home in Victorville, Calif.
___A leader in a 104-year-old ministry called the Utah Gospel Mission, Van Gorden was arrested twice in April for passing out Christian literature on the plaza. He said LDS security guards first arrested and detained him and then turned him over to the custody of the Salt Lake City police. He was released on bail, and the church later dropped trespassing charges.
___"The Utah Gospel Mission, as a mission organization, as well as other mission groups, have used that section of Main Street to pass out gospel literature," Van Gorden said. "The city recognized that that was a public forum for over 150 years."
___The judges agreed with Van Gorden, saying the city could not delegate to the church in a public easement the power to restrict speech in a way that discriminates against non-Mormon viewpoints.
___But attorneys for the LDS church have asked for the full 10th Circuit Court to review the case because of its First Amendment implications. Among other things, the church argues that allowing the city to control a plaza filled with religious imagery could be viewed as establishment of religion, which is banned in the First Amendment.
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