The Creation Museum built in Kentucky by the Christian ministry Answers in Genesis has come under attack several times by atheists, including when they opposed a zoning plan in a local court and then staged a protest outside its doors on the day it opened in 2007.
The organization's next project, the Noah's Ark Encounter, now faces headwinds from the same critics.
And AIG founder Ken Ham says it's beginning to look like there are those who want a double standard applied whenever a project is Christian.
"The local secularists have revealed their true motive with their proposed billboard campaign. They ultimately want to stop people going to the Ark Encounter, which is a Christian, family friendly attraction that will have a great economic impact on the state and add jobs," Ham said in a statement sent to WND.
"It begs the question: What are the secularists so fearful of? The Christians I know don’t try to stop people from going to tourist attractions that might present an evolutionary worldview. In fact, we will be promoting all the major tourist attractions in the region even though we may not necessarily agree with everything stated at each place.
"These Freethinkers simply don't want Christians to have the full freedom to present their beliefs in the culture," he said.
His reaction was prompted by complaints to the media by the Tri-State Freethinkers, which wanted to post billboards with messages condemning the Ark Encounter.
One local billboard company declined to post them, and a second company, which puts billboards on trucks and drives them around, also declined.
The Freethinkers wanted the message to say: "Genocide and Incest Park: Celebrating 2,000 years of myths."
When they were unsuccessful, they complained to the media, and ABC reported on their fretting. The network quoted Jim Helton, of the Freethinkers group, saying, "We tried with everyone we could think of, and these were [billboard] companies that originally were in agreement to do business with us. We're just looking for someone to take our money."
ABC said Helton speculated that "fear of a scandal pushed the companies to drop the ads."
In a blog on the AIG website, Ham explained the long history of opposition his organization has faced.
"When we set out to build the Creation Museum in Northern Kentucky in 1996, a local atheist group vigorously opposed us. As a result, the then-Fiscal Court ruled against our rezoning, and we had to find a different museum property. We found the piece that the museum is now built on – a much better location, right off exit 11 on Interstate 275, and we built a much bigger museum. The atheists protested outside the Creation Museum on the day it was opened in 2007. Over the years, they did all they could to try to keep us from opening a museum," he wrote.
See a promotion for the Ark Encounter:
"These atheists had wanted to stop us from building a museum that eventually provided thousands of jobs in the area (including about 400 staff at the Answers in Genesis/Creation Museum/Hebron design facilities). They wanted to stop the opening of a facility that has added at least $60 million every year to the regional economy since it opened in 2007, based on a formula provided by the Northern Kentucky Convention and Visitors Bureau. The Creation Museum has now been open for almost nine years," he said.
"The point is that atheists and other secularist groups (including the Tri-State Freethinkers) apparently would rather stop Kentucky from receiving this tremendous economic and job-creation boost that the Ark will bring, than being tolerant of Christians trying to have free exercise of their religion by building Christian-themed attractions. They really would rather hurt Kentucky than have a Christian group build such world-class attractions open to everyone who chooses to visit," he wrote.
He also pointed out opposition that had come from an article in the Natural Historian.
There, critics lamented the fact that a poster about the location features "modern species."
"If you visit the Ark Encounter this summer, you will discover that Answers in Genesis does not believe that any of the animals that literally entered and exited this ark looked like they are depicted in this poster," the criticism blasted.
But Ham responded, "He is absolutely correct that the animals in the poster (and commercial) are modern species, not the representative kinds that were on the Ark. This was very deliberate in our marketing! This critic doesn't understand (or he does understand but wants to mock us anyway) our modern-day marketing campaign, and he did not read the tag line carefully: 'The Voyage Begins AGAIN.' This is not the original Ark – it's a re-creation (a life-size model) of the original. The TV commercial shows people living today and animals that exist in the present that are heading for our re-created 2016 Ark. The advertising is meant to encourage people to also head for the Ark Encounter. The poster shows animals of today going to the Ark for this new 'voyage.'"
The big fight for AIG came in the courts, where a federal judge ultimately ruled it qualifies for a Kentucky state program designed to boost tourism.
Critics had said because it is Christian – the state could discriminate against it.
But U.S. District Judge Greg Van Tatenhove in the Eastern District of Kentucky affirmed the Ark Encounter's right to participate in a program that eventually returns some of the sales taxes the site generates.
The ruling concluded "the Commonwealth's exclusion of AIG from participating in the program for the reasons stated – i.e., on the basis of AIG's religious beliefs, purpose, mission, message, or conduct, is a violation of AIG's rights under the First Amendment to the federal Constitution."
The judge also affirmed AIG's right to use a religious preference in its hiring, specifically noting that "Title VII includes exceptions" for which AIG qualifies.
The Ark Encounter is scheduled to open July 7, 2016, in Williamstown, Kentucky.
More than $90 million was raised for land purchase, infrastructure, exhibit construction and the building of the park’s centerpiece: a massive, full scale, 510-foot-long recreation of Noah’s Ark. It is expected to draw more than 1 million visitors a year.
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