Knoxville (IA) City Council Approves New Cross-Less Veterans Memorial

Remember that display of a kneeling soldier, gun in hand, next to a Christian cross, that sits in taxpayer-funded Young’s Park in Knoxville, Iowa?

Last we heard, the City Council was thinking about privatizing the land on which the Christian memorial sits so it could remain in place.

But the veterans group that put up the original display made things much easier last week when they volunteered to swap out the old statue for this new one:

“It`ll be a true memorial to everybody, not just one. There`s no religious connotation to it. There`s no black, white, green. No race, creed, color designation, no gender designation, it`s pretty PC,” said [AMVETS Post 63 Spokesman Don] Zoutte. Zoutte says he hopes the new memorial will put to bed all of the controversy that has surrounded the community over the current memorial that’s there. “It was never, ever, ever meant to offend anybody. I`m the one that put it up…we didn’t see it as a religious symbol…a warrior saying goodbye to another warrior, and not even once did we think about that as being a cross. It was a grave marker, and obviously somebody doesn’t agree with that,” said Zoutte.

His ignorance doesn’t mean it wasn’t wrong. No one didn’t “agree” with a grave marker. They disagreed with the government suggesting only Christians have died in war. The new display, even though it’s called the “Battlefield Cross,” isn’t explicitly religious in the same way and will probably pass constitutional muster.

As for the old statue, I don’t really care where it goes, though I’m sure some church will find a good home for it.

(Top image via Imgur. Bottom image via Icon Statues. Thanks to Davin for the link. Large portions of this post were published earlier)