Despite a $38 billion deficit, California lawmakers want to help fund a $500,000 AIDS memorial designed in the form of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, prompting threats of a lawsuit.
Opponents call the project – known as “The Wall: Las Memorias” – a religious monument that breaches the First Amendment’s prohibition against establishment of religion and creates an environment of discrimination against neighbors who believe homosexuality is immoral.
 AIDS memorial shaped in form of Quetzalcoatl |
Yesterday, the Sacramento-based Pro-Family Law Center hand-delivered letters to legislators in the capital, warning it will sue the city and state if they approve funding for it in the proposed budget, which is currently being debated.
Organizers of the project have asked the state for $400,000.
“This is just plain corrupt,” said Scott Lively, the law center’s president. “I think most Californians could think of much better uses for that money than building a monument to dead homosexuals and IV drug users in the form of a pagan god once worshipped with human sacrifice.”
The project’s founder, Richard Zaldivar, told WorldNetDaily he’s “shocked” it would be viewed as unconstitutional.
“If this is going to be interpreted as being religious, then we need to start changing the names of California cities,” he said, noting Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and many others honor saints.
Lively insisted his group’s history of defending Christian symbols in public life does not conflict with its argument in this issue.
“If we were to take the position of the Founding Fathers, there is nothing wrong with putting Christian symbols up and taking pagan ones down,” he said. “But if we’re going to be stuck with the current interpretation of the establishment clause, then at least we want to have an even playing field.”
In an artist’s concept of the memorial, Quetzalcoatl, one of the major deities of the ancient Mexican pantheon, is described as representing “the principle of life as life-force.”
 Quetzalcoatl |
The project is planned for Lincoln Park, located in an area in northeastern Los Angeles with a large Hispanic population. Lively says some local residents are angry, contending the city planned and approved the monument in secret meetings, in violation of the law, to prevent opposition.
“There are still people in this community who don’t know about it,” said Manny Aldana, a former Republican candidate for the state Assembly.
But Zaldivar, who has been working for nine years on the project, contends it has wide backing from the community, which has been invited to more than a dozen meetings in the past year to offer their opinions.
Four or five people showed up at a meeting last fall to object to the project, he said, but the opposition has been minimal.
Pro-Family Law Center attorney Richard Ackerman insisted the city “didn’t allow people to participate in the process at the point where the exact nature of the project was discussed.”
Aldana said some opponents object to it taking up green space while others focus on the memorial’s message. Some members of the Asian community say the somber symbols of death offend their cultural and religious sensibilities, he said.
The bottom line for many, though, is the allocation of limited resources.
“We are facing a budget deficit right now,” he said. “This isn’t going to help the situation, when there are workers being laid off.”
Zaldivar believes religious members of the local community who oppose homosexuality on moral grounds should not worry about having the memorial in their neighborhood, as the focus is on the AIDS issue, not homosexuality.
“With the surging of AIDS throughout the world, we need to start looking at places for the community to come together and heal,” he said.
The memorial would consist of eight panels, two containing the names of people who have died of AIDS and six containing art, set in an open garden that includes benches, a rose garden, a walking path and a sculpture.
The project’s purpose, according to a website, is “to erect a memorial where a community can heal from their human loss to the disease of AIDS; where people can teach themselves about sexuality, HIV/AIDS and the dangers of cultural denial. To learn and to love who you were born to be … .”
 Model of memorial |
Lively accuses lawmakers of being unwilling to buck the powerful homosexual lobby on public funding for special-interest projects.
The California Assembly’s five-member “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Caucus” has introduced a number of bills in the last year that would grant far-reaching rights to homosexuals and transsexuals.
Earlier this month, the Assembly passed a historic bill awarding virtually all the rights of marriage to homosexual “domestic partners.”
