Can a Sheriff’s Vehicle Have a Jesus Fish On It?

No! Citizen’s arrest!

i concur with Mr J Myers.

Can a Sheriff’s Vehicle Have a Jesus Fish On It?

That one does.

I would argue that it’s utterly inappropriate to display any personal elements on the exterior of the vehicle. Should an official vehicle have a bumpersticker that reads, “This delinquent had sex with your honor student”? Or, in better taste, a “I’m proud of my honor student”?

It’s a company car, not your personal vehicle.

I’m going with the principle that’s it’s a company car, not the individual sheriff’s personal vehicle. — As such, personal expressions religious or not are inappropriate.

That should be the argument the FFRF takes, not just because it is religious in nature.

Further the town paid for the vehicle, and it is maintained by the town (gas, upkeep, oil, …) More reasons the symbol is inappropriate.

Jonas, I disagree. I agree on the point that personal expression on non-personal vehicles is inappropriate, but that’s completely different from unconstitutional. You’re not going to get much traction in a court if you’re suing based on sheriff departmental policy.

It’s precisely the fact that it is religious that is the big deal, and makes it actually illegal (and unconstitutional). (Same would go for an anti-religious sticker, of course. This is obvious, but there will always be religious people who think they’re being clever by bringing this up. Sorry, no, we’re not actually hypocrites.)

I agree, it’s a government car. There should be no personalization. However, I’m not offended by the symbol. It’s so common, I probably would have missed it.

Sock, don’t feel too bad. Even my “progressive” state of California has had several religious bonehead news stories lately, including (ugh) Prop 8.

Persevere.

What about a sexist prayer on town police force website?

http://www.orangeparkpolice.com/

Note that it’s the SECOND link on the left, above any useful information. And ugly HTML should be illegal, too.

Deb,

what if it was a darwin fish or co-exist bumper sticker?

Darwinian evolution by natural selection isn’t a religious statement, or political one, it’s a fact supported by masses of evidence. Co-exist is pretty vague, but I think it’s a political statement. So it’s up to the authority incharge of the vehicles whether the evolution fish or co-exist signs are on vehicles. An argument can be made that police officers should present themselves as politically neutral, but as far as scientific views, they better follow the facts.

@Secular Planet: re Policeman’s Prayer, I suspect this was developed when more men were cops, than women.

Mass Fireman have a similar prayer:

http://www.masshome.com/firememorial.html

A Fireman’s Prayer

When I am called to duty, Lord, wherever flames may rage, Give me strength to save a life, whatever be its age.

Help me embrace a little child before it is too late, Or save an older person from the horror of that fate.

Enable me to be alert and hear the weakest shout, And quickly and efficiently to put the fire out.
I want to heed my calling and give the best in me, To guard my every neighbor and protect his property.
And if according to your will, I am to lose my life, Please bless with your protecting hand

my children and my wife.

AMEN.
Course now it could apply to lesbian fireladies.

I’m not particularly offended, personally, by the prayer, though if I were on the force, I wouldn’t want to be ordered to pray.

If the sheriff wants to decorate the back of his van, he should use something that is totally appropriate for Atlanta Georgia:

Sadly it is appropriate for GA.

Yet again, my state is in the blogs.

Why can’t something happen in GA that the atheist community would applaud?

Sorry Sock, never gonna happen, well, not in our life time at any rate. We can’t even get the damn state liqueur laws changed because of the Christian gestapo.

If the economy was better my wife and I would sell our place and leave this state. At the very least we just try to stay in midtown ATL which we can do very well.

But back to the cop with the Jebus Fish. If any legal challenge can up, you know the local news will be playing the Christian ‘persecution’ song.

And we’ll be the bad guys, like always.

If you notice, the vehicle license plate starts with “GV” denoting that it is indeed a government vehicle, not the sheriff’s private vehicle. Being government property, it is definately unconstitutional to put the fish on it unless the sheriff is willing to allow any and all religious groups to stick a symbol on. This is really no different than the christman creche issues where religious displays are not allowed on government property unless all religions have equal access. If vehicles were exempt as “govenment property” then every christmas we’d start seeing baby jesus and friends tied on top of the sheriff’s disco lights!

No, it shouldn’t. But all your going to do by making them remove it is to stir up more anti-atheist sentiment. Personally, I think there are more important battles to fight, than removing that stupid Fish from the back of Sheriff Bubba’s truck.

Personally, it’s such a small statement of faith, and hardly trashy looking…I don’t see it as much different from a person wearing a cross.

No problem if the Sheriff wants to wear the cross inside their shirt. But this is the equivalent of pinning a cross right below a badge, or a sticker saying “Contribute to the Police Benevolent Society”.

Soapbox: I’d be nice if, just once, I could see something on this site concerning a southern state without reading prejudiced verbal attacks on said state.

On topic: I’m not sure this is illegal. It certainly isn’t a violation of the first amendment, as Congress has not passed a law in this situation. However, I understand that more broad interpretations have been taken by Supreme Courts (state and/or federal).

AJ> I’d be nice if, just once, I could see
AJ> something on this site concerning a
AJ> southern state without reading prejudiced
AJ> verbal attacks on said state.

They’re not being PREjudged; they’re being judged by their public actions.

We have bigger fish to fry, IMO. (Pun intended.)

Frying small fish is important, too.

Read Malcom Gladwell’s book – The Tipping Point – he describes how cracking down on turnstile jumpers and graffiti artists helped scale back major crime for one city.

Polly,
I think this should be corrected, but most importantly it should be corrected by the people of that county, like the commenter above, Bible Belt Non-Believer. They are the ones who know how big or small a deal this is. They know if this is just a little fudge by one not-so-professional deputy, or if this is the tip of an iceberg of religious intrusion into their local government. The saying, “Every country has the government it deserves” applies here, to this county. If nobody living there cares, then they have it coming to them, and whatever comes next.

I don’t think that we need to worry about the argument that some people will get pissed off at atheists if someone protests this. We don’t have to do anything more than just exist for them to hate us, so to put it in a delicate way, fuck ‘em.

But maybe they might learn that wiping their asses with the First Amendment, even in a little way is not acceptable, and that there are people, atheists or not, who will stand up and stop it, and maybe they’ll learn that the gov’munt has to be on everyone’s side, not just on Jeebus’s side.

Yes, I agree that we should extend our influence in positive ways, but we also have to fight against the thousands of daily negatives at the same time. I’m tired of tiptoeing around while my freedom, everybody’s freedom is nibbled away in tiny pieces. How much of the death of a thousand cuts is acceptable?

@Mike No, when someone makes blanket statements about, for example, everyone living in Georgia, they are being prejudiced and using stereotypes.

Again, despite being a non-theist myself, I just can’t see how making a big deal about this will do anything remotely positive.

I absolutely agree in the wall of separation between church and state. On the other hand, some people appear to be on a quixotic quest to destroy any sign of religion that they can find.

Polly, I agree that lawsuits are the last resort rather than the first. Educating the sheriff with a letter about the inappropriateness of the fish emblem on a government vehicle might be more than enough to nip it in the bud.

However, doing nothing for fear of a reactionary response from the community has no end. Where would you say “Enough!” in the following scenario?

1. The county sheriff puts one Ichthys on the van he usually drives. Those local citizens who find it objectionable, not wanting to inflame the rest of the community, do not object.

2. Not having anyone to bring up his awareness of how the Ichthys is out of bounds, the sheriff has them put on all the sheriff department vehicles. Wanting to avoid a reactionary backlash, the local people who value the establishment clause say nothing and do nothing.

3. County officials notice the fish on all the sheriff vehicles, and without even thinking about any Constitutional conflict, begin to install them on all county vehicles. The citizens who see the problem with a county-wide endorsement of a specific religion, rationalizing that they’re just harmless little fishy symbols of the predominant religion in the county, sit on their butts and try to ignore it.

4. Not long after that, having received no education about church-state issues, the county supervisors install a cross on the wall of their chamber, directly over their county seal. Those who might have objected, faced with such strong consensus against them, not only say nothing, they pretend to approve.

Polly, now so far, these have only involved symbols. Nobody has been “directly and negatively effected” as you put it. But in this pervasive atmosphere where nobody in the county government thinks twice about it, how long would it be before religious considerations begin to creep into hiring practices for the sheriff’s department and the rest of the county? How long until the sheriff’s response to crimes begin to be different for church-going victims vs. those who do not attend? How long before financial decisions of the county supervisors favor religious projects over secular projects?

The above scenario you might find implausible somewhere along the line, but that is not really my point. It would grow worse not because people are consciously, deliberately wanting to insinuate their religion into local government, but because they’re not thinking about it one way or another. The point of objecting to the little fish is about keeping up public awareness. A simple, respectful disapproval of this small tort could bring up the sheriff’s awareness. If you do not educate people about church-state separation issues, they generally do not spontaneously come to appreciate how important those issues are, and they blithely continue to increase their intrusions until they become seriously harmful. Then it is very hard to correct, and then divisive and expensive lawsuits are the only remedy.

LOL! J Myers, thanks, that was hilarious! I always liked Barney Fife. As silly, pompous and incompetent as he could be, he was always conscientiously trying to keep up his professionalism. Even if he had been religious, he would never have approved of a fish emblem on a sheriff car. Andy, being the ultimate “aw, let’s not get anybody all riled up” kind of guy, would have ignored the issue.

Polly, I completely share your preferences, and I’m always looking for some opportunity to have a constructive contribution to make to my community as an atheist. I hope we can both make a positive difference.