(LibertySons.org) – As temperatures drop and nights become longer, many Americans excitedly anticipate the festive Winter Holidays and the traditional lights and decorations accompanying them. Yet one Republican Congressional representative is expressing outrage after he said the Satanic Temple of Wisconsin appropriated a long-standing tradition by entering a tree in the National Railroad Museum’s Festival of Trees.
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) spoke with Fox host Sean Duffy during a “Sunday Morning Futures” segment on November 26 to discuss the issue in his home district. Likening the action to cultural appropriation, Gallagher compared the Satanic Temple tree display to Hamas waving a banner inside a synagogue, commenting, “It’s impossible to overstate how offensive this is to Christians.”
Red lights, red beads, pentacles, and hand-made ornaments adorn the tree, one of 66 trees on display at the National Railroad Museum for the organization’s annual Festival of Trees event. When asked about the Satanic Temple’s participation in the event, Jacqueline Frank, the non-profit museum’s CEO, told the Green Bay Press Gazette, “We’re not discriminating against anyone.”
Frank explained the museum’s guidelines required that organizations can’t promote violence, drugs, adult content, or alcohol. She gave examples of several businesses that submitted trees, including a hardware store, a tea shop, music stores, a toy store, pet crematories, trucking businesses, insurance companies, radio stations, and doctors’ offices. In fact, only six Christian-related organizations submitted trees.
Frank pointed out, “the Christmas tree is used by so many different secular and religious organizations.” She also argued that rejecting a non-Christian group solely because of their religion or philosophy could have set an untenable precedent.
Gallagher, who gushed to Duffy about the museum’s annual “Polar Express” screening among the antique trains as a wonderful family event, said he wouldn’t take his children to a venue where they would be “surrounded by Satanic trees.” The lawmaker said that although people often accuse Conservatives of launching culture wars, they were defending their children amidst “the encroachment of woke ideology” on cherished “basic traditions.”
Another Fox contributor, Joey Jones, spoke as part of a panel discussion on “The Big Sunday Show” about the situation. He said he believed in the First Amendment, even when organizations used it to bait Conservatives into a fight. He insisted that it was important not to give up on events like the Festival of Trees just because organizations like the Satanic Temple show up.
~Here’s to Our Liberty!
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