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December 11, 2002 9:00 a.m. No Room in the Public Square Crèche legal wars.

don't know why we live in a country where people are so damn uptight that they can't stand the thought of seeing the Baby Jesus," Catholic League head Bill Donohue fumed yesterday. "If you don't like it, look away."

If only it were that easy, the Catholic League wouldn't have had to join with plaintiffs in filing a federal lawsuit on Monday, charging the New York City public school system with religious discrimination and an unconstitutional infringement on the First Amendment rights of Christian schoolchildren. In New York City, Nativity scenes are banned from public schools — but you'll never guess what they allow.

According to a November 28, 2001, memorandum from the schools chancellor's top lawyer, "The display of secular holiday symbol decorations is permitted. Such symbols include, but are not limited to, Christmas trees, Menorahs, and the Star and Crescent."

How do a menorah, the Jewish ritual candelabrum whose use is central to Hanukkah celebrations, and the Islamic star-and-crescent symbol qualify as "secular," whereas a Christian crèche is "religious," and therefore unacceptable? Of course a crèche is explicitly religious, as well as of historical and cultural value. But so are the Jewish and Muslim symbols. You can see where Donohue gets the idea that the school system is monkeying around with the meaning of religious and secular for the sole purpose of making it legal to discriminate against Christian students.

The federal lawsuit was filed on behalf of Andrea Skoros, a Catholic mother from Queens, and her two minor children, who are public school students in the city. The lawsuit alleges that by permitting the display Islamic and Jewish religious symbols while disallowing their Christian equivalents, the public schools violate the constitutional prohibition against the state privileging a particular religion. The plaintiffs seek a permanent injunction against the city preventing it from implementing a policy they find discriminatory against Christians.

"I think it's callous indifference to the religious liberty and rights of Christians," said Richard Thompson, president of the Thomas More Law Center, a Michigan legal group that will argue the case on the plaintiff's behalf. Thompson added that his group is not seeking the removal of the Jewish and Muslim symbols — "it would be totally intolerant" — but rather the inclusion of similar Christian symbols.

NRO was unable to elicit comment from the New York City schools' press office.

Thompson says this is the first case to challenge the ban on crèches in a public- school setting. There have been previous cases that have successfully overturned bans on Nativity scenes on public property where religious symbols of other faiths are on display.

"The courts have been very clear that when government gets into the business of deciding what is and isn't religious, they're entangling themselves with religion," said John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute, a legal organization that specializes in religious-liberty issues.

Whitehead said that if any religious symbols are allowed, then a multiplicity of them must be allowed, as long as they are to be on temporary display, and relevant to the holiday season. He described New York City's ban on the crèche as "asinine."

"Who comes up with these things? The one thing they're always trying to exclude is the Nativity scene," he said. "If you've got a Nativity scene by itself, then you've got a constitutional problem. But when you surround it with other symbols, it's legal."

The controversial school policy does permit symbols such as Santa Claus and the Christmas tree, but the Catholic League president says those are wholly or primarily secular symbols that are in no way the Christian equivalent of a menorah or star-and-crescent. Donohue says anti-crèche discrimination is a problem not only in New York City, but also in public schools across the nation.

"You can't have Baby Jesus, but you can have a condom on a cucumber," he said angrily, referring to sex-education programs in some public schools. "Political correctness has run crazy in this country. I hope this [case] goes to the [United States] Supreme Court and teaches some of these religious bigots a lesson."

The Catholic League chief said followers of Jesus have been far too quick to allow school administrators and other government officials to trample on their constitutional rights regarding Christmas displays, and must bear some blame for the current confusion. Said Donohue, "Christians are such wimps."