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In the 121 years since the French gave the United States the Statue of Liberty, nobody has demanded a competing statue supporting tyranny.
So nobody should be able to demand that competing structures be erected next to monuments of the Ten Commandments that were gifted to Pleasant Grove and Duchesne, the cities' attorneys say.
That argument is outlined in appeals of two decisions issued April 17 by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that parks are public forums and that followers of the Summum faith have a right to display their Seven Aphorisms next to the Ten Commandments.
A three-judge panel of the court said Pleasant Grove and Duchesne must allow the religious organization to put up its own monuments and the only way around that is to take down the Ten Commandments.
Salt Lake City civil rights attorney Brian Barnard, who represents Summum, said the 10th Circuit rulings are based on simple fairness.
"If a city allows one religious monument in a municipal park, the city must allow all religious monuments," Barnard said. "A city government cannot determine one set of beliefs is worthy of display and the next set is not."
Noting that the history of the LDS Church is "replete with mistreatment because of its minority status," Barnard said, "I am dumbfounded that civic leaders in Utah want to perpetuate mistreatment of minority faiths."
The cities see it differently. They are asking the full panel of 10th Circuit judges to rehear their cases and overturn the last month's rulings.
Those rulings, they argue, generate "mischief."
For example, according to the Pleasant Grove appeal, under the rulings, "a city could not accept a monument with a flattering portrayal of a civil rights hero without also accepting a monument that lampoons that same hero. A city could not accept a Holocaust Memorial without being forced to accept another that denies the Holocaust or praises its perpetrators."
The cities - which are represented by lawyers from the Thomas More Law Center in Michigan and the American Center for Law & Justice in Washington, D.C. - say that when a private citizen is allowed to speak in a public forum, other individuals can, under certain circumstances, ask for equal access.
However, the Ten Commandments monuments were given to the cities, making them government property, they say. And the displays became a governmental message, such as "this monument reflects our history," and the municipalities are not required to give private individuals equal space, according to the cities.
"Unlike in private speech cases, accepting a Ten Commandments monument as the government's own display does not require accepting an anti-Decalogue monument ('Thou shalt disregard the Sabbath,' etc.) in the name of viewpoint neutrality," the appeal says. "Nor does accepting a monument require that a government park be turned into a cluttered junkyard of monuments contributed by all comers."
Members of Summum sued Duchesne in 2003 and Pleasant Grove in 2005 after the cities rejected their offered displays, proposed to be similar in size and nature to the Ten Commandments.
Summum, a religion based on Egyptian customs and headquartered in a pyramid-shaped temple in Salt Lake City, was founded in 1975. The religion's aphorisms involve psychokinesis, correspondence, vibration, opposition, rhythm, cause and effect, and gender.
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* Correspondent ROBERT BOCZKIEWICZ contributed to this article.