Condo owners told to remove religious statues -- Newsday.com
Here is a condo association that knows how to generate bad press.
Gloria Gamarano's statue of the Virgin Mary has been with her family for more than 45 years. Until two months ago, the statue decorated the small garden that wraps around the condominium she owns at Country Pointe at Coram, a Medford gated community. Now, though, it sits behind the home, a casualty of a potentially unlawful community rule at the complex that bans religious statues in gardens and other common areas.
2 comments:
Or good press, depending on your point of view. I'm in the market for a home, and I'd go there.
I believe that religion is a private thing, so along with your underwear, should be kept inside the house. But I realize there's people that think they have a bundle of one-way tickets to heaven, so want to set up a booth outside. In fact, that's a part of being Christian, spreading the good word (or gospel), maybe that's why Christians find it hard to understand why some of us are offended by their holier-than-thou attitude.
Even well-intentioned comments leave a mark - like "God didn't want war - he died for us" - hijacking the generic God to brand Jesus. If you grew up using God and Jesus interchangeably, this is no big deal for you. Perhaps as Allah and God are for me. But that slip of the tongue - if it can be called that - can and does feel like I, as a non-Christian, am being marginalized. Not enough to take up arms, probably not enough to even mention it to the person's face - yet, here, I want to make you understand that these things do register.
As a non-religious Hindu who attended a Catholic school, I'm not normally disturbed by visions of Mary in a garden - in fact, I will almost certainly be more disturbed if I saw the same people displaying a statue of a Hindu deity :)
However, I can understand that being surrounded by religious symbols of another faith can easily be unnerving - I suppose it wouldn't matter so much if all the households practiced different religions. The big majority can and should make allowances for the insecure minority - that's what we try to do as Hindus in India.
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