Thread: Obama BANS 'Merry Christmas" at Virginia Veterans' Facility

Obama’s VA Facility Bans ‘Merry Christmas"

by Ken Klukowski20 Nov 2015Washington, D.C. President Barack Obama’s Department of Veterans Affairs has banned employees at its facility in Salem, Virginia, from saying “Merry Christmas” to veterans.

It started as a broader ban that included Christmas trees. Federal law recognizes Christmas as an official federal holiday (5 U.S.C. § 6103) and provides federal employees with a paid day off to celebrate the Christian belief in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.

Every year, a White House Christmas Tree and a Capitol Christmas Tree grace those two respective buildings in Washington D.C., and a National Christmas Tree is also officially lighted outdoors for the public to enjoy during that time of year.

Yet the “Executive Leadership Team” at the Salem VA Medical Center banned Christmas trees, as well as other Christian speech and celebrations. As reported by local media, an email sent by senior staff to the center’s employees reads in part:

…Public areas may only be decorated in a manner that is celebratory of the winter season. Displays must not promote any religion. Please note that trees (regardless of the types of ornaments used) have been deemed to promote the Christian religion and will not be permitted in any public areas this year.

Just hours ago, pressure from the center’s employees caused the management team to cave on the Christmas tree ban. Christmas trees are back in at the facility.

However, the email goes on to say that private religious expressions can only be uttered in “personal work areas.” That means employees can only speak freely in places where the public usually cannot enter and, even then, only if the recipient would clearly understand that the speaker is speaking in his personal capacity only.

In other words, an employee could be punished for wishing “Merry Christmas” to a veteran in the lobby or any other public area.
Even when those stringent curbs are obeyed, the email directive adds that private religious speech can still be banned if managers decide such speech “interfere[s] with carrying out official duties and responsibilities,” threatening penalties against people who offer religious greetings even behind closed doors.

The email also bars Christmas music, saying that if a supervisor has allowed an employee to have music in his workspace, such music must “be secular (non-religious).”

This Obama administration VA’s directive is inconsistent with controlling precedent from the U.S. Supreme Court. In the 1989 Allegheny case, the court narrowly (5-4) adopted the “endorsement test,” holding that government action violates the Establishment Clause when a reasonable observer would think the government is endorsing religion.

Yet even in that case—which many legal scholars consider hostile to religious faith—the court, by a 6-3 vote, held that the display of Christmas trees does not endorse any religion.

“The Christmas tree, unlike the menorah, is not itself a religious symbol. Although Christmas trees once carried religious connotations, today they typify the secular celebration of Christmas,” wrote Justice Harry Blackmun, upholding the government’s displaying a 40-foot Christmas tree on public land outside a courthouse.

“Numerous Americans place Christmas trees in their homes without subscribing to Christian religious beliefs, and when the city’s tree stands along in front of the City-County building, it is not considered an endorsement of Christian faith,” he added.

The message from the center’s top leaders says that VA employees who need further guidance about the removal of religious symbols should “contact the Chaplain Service at ext. 2165.”

“At a time when our VA should be doing everything it can to honor our veterans, it instead denigrates them and their service,” said Michael Berry, senior counsel with Liberty Institute, the largest law firm in the United States that litigates exclusively religious liberty cases.
“Any VA employee—whether they work at the Salem VA Center or elsewhere—who feels that their free-speech or religious-liberty rights are being violated, they should contact us immediately,” he told Breitbart News. The firm’s website is www.libertyinstitute.org.

Breitbart News legal editor Ken Klukowski also litigates religious liberty cases with Liberty Institute. Follow him on Twitter @kenklukowski.







http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...rry-christmas/

Honestly?! It's Christmas with a short i, not a long one. Christmas is about a season, and means different things to different people. It's more today about good times with family and friends and celebrating the nice things about life, and for some of us yes, it means a religious holiday, but frankly, it is so much more than that to most people, so to do anything to harm Christmas is simply inhuman authoritarianism on the part of government officials and yes even businesses who play the government authoritarian kiss-butt game.

SHAME ON YOU VETERANS ADMINISTRATORS! I hope your home Christmas lights spark out this year, singe your trees, stink up your houses and your turkey, ham, duck or goose burns while you're explaining all this to the fire department and cleaning up the mess.

Oh, and MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I guess next they'll be removing the Cross from the chapel and putting in prayer rugs so the uncouth can stick their butts up in the air for their so called prayers atop their little rugs - that would probably be OK though...DUH!

Removing holiday cheer is no way to treat our sick veterans, depriving them of a cherished and holy time filled with, for many, the celebration of a new born Saviour and/or Santa Claus or a Menora as Hanukkah time coincides. A once a year time filled with heart warming memories of their youth or family times.

Bah Humbug!

This is just the beginning of the goal to remove Christianity in America to make way for muslims' sharia law, that will be next as their numbers grow.

Christians built their churches for their worship - they never demanded churches be provided for them. They are demanding mosques in EU and they gather in the streets with their little rugs and their uncouth butt routine to show their power, numbers and force a mosque to be built.

Oh but "muslims require (demand) a place to worship" - well buy the land or rent something and make your own house of worship - don't take the Christians' house of worship away from them. Their demands are a method to control and dominate.

Just like the illegals in the USA - obnoxious & demanding to force control and babies galore that they do not pay for to culminate in future numbers dominance - even though they do not have a legal right to be here. Case closed, go back!

Oh I just think they're the laziest most demanding people on the planet. It's always all about them, nobody else matters to them. They are the most self-centered worthless bunch of people. That's why they end up as migrants. They won't fight for their own nation, they won't do what's necessary to have a nice tolerant country, they don't work, they just whine and kill and demand and run in mobs.