Church is no place for pickets and protests

Those who organized and executed the picket lines at St. Andrew’s

Presbyterian Church on Sunday have done themselves and their position

a severe injustice. Few things I have seen were as offensive as

seeing that group of demonstrators surrounding St. Andrew’s as

parishioners awkwardly tried to make their way into the building to

exercise one of the basic rights that we, as Americans, hold near and

dear -- the right to worship.

Let’s be perfectly clear. Picket lines and picketers have one

purpose and one purpose only, and that is to intimidate. In essence,

those who oppose St. Andrew’s expansion made it clear that they will

take any means necessary, including intimidation, to achieve their

goal of stopping the project. While I was personally ambivalent about

the project prior to this incident, after seeing the picket lines I

have reconsidered my position. Place me now squarely on the side of

St. Andrew’s.

Seeing those picket lines brought back bad memories of when I was

a child growing up in the Deep South when a Catholic president was

forcing reluctant Southern schools to desegregate. I can remember

very well walking to our local Catholic church, and the cat calls and

the bullying that we experienced both there and at school.

I had thought that those dark days were gone, but seeing the

picket lines on Sunday brought back the same sickening feeling.

Clearly, there is a difference between what was going on in the Deep

South in the 1960s and what is going on in Newport Beach in 2005. But

there is one commonality: Individuals who stoop so low as to try to

intimidate others from exercising their freedom of religion because

their church, their religion or an individual associated with same,

has taken a position that they disagree with. Shame on them.

* RICK TAYLOR lives in Newport Beach.