Religious displays barred in Wash. state Capitol

The state is trying to avoid another holiday-season controversy by barring religious and other nongovernmental displays inside buildings at the Capitol campus in Olympia.

The new rules were signed Friday by the director of the Department of General Administration. They still allow the annual state-sponsored holiday tree inside the Capitol rotunda.

Last year, a Nativity display at the capitol stirred controversy after a Wisconsin-based atheist group put up a nearby placard mocking religion. A number of other displays followed, and the state eventually declared a moratorium that froze several pending permit requests.

The fight might just move outdoors. Under the new rules, religious displays are OK outside the Capitol buildings.

"It's a shame that the state is basically shutting down 95 percent of Americans that celebrate a federal holiday, which it is," said Ron Wesselius, a Thurston County realtor who put up the Nativity the past two years. "They are not letting them celebrate."

Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, said she was pleased about the new rules but added that they don't go far enough.

"I don't think Nativity scenes belong on the outside of capitols either," Gaylor said.

She pledged to put up a large sign if a Nativity is allowed this year on the Capitol campus.

"We will match whatever they do," she said. "I don't think the public will be any happier about it on the outside than they would be on the inside. I encourage the state to avoid the entire debacle."

In the political tempest that followed last year's displays by Wesselius and Gaylor's group, a circus atmosphere developed, and one Fox News television commentator spurred thousands of calls to the office of Gov. Chris Gregoire to protest the atheists' sign.

The eventual moratorium froze pending requests for a "flying spaghetti monster" display, a poem display sought by a Kansas church that slammed Santa Claus, a Jerry Seinfeld-inspired "Festivus" pole and others.

General Administration spokesman Steve Valandra said that by allowing the displays outside, the state is simply trying to accommodate free speech while maintaining some decorum.

"We found last year a lot of people are for free speech as long as people agree with their particular point of view," Valandra said. "At some point, you have to honor the Constitution."

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Information from: The Olympian, http://www.theolympian.com