Broward County Commissioner Michael Udine lights the Chanukah Menorah at Chabad of Coral Springs. {Chabad of Coral Springs}
To the Coral Springs City Commission and everyone running for it:
I hear my name came up at Chabad on Sunday night. I wasn’t there, which is a shame, because I could’ve saved everybody some worrying.
Rabbi Denburg asked the candidates whether they’d put a menorah outside City Hall, next to the Christmas tree. Commissioner Simmons hesitated, warning that a menorah might open the grand lawn to “something where children have to learn about the devil.”
He didn’t say my name, but everyone in the room likely knew who he meant, and Kevin Deutsch put it in print on these pages. I’m not the reason your Jewish neighbors don’t have a menorah at City Hall, and nobody running for office gets to use me as one.
Back in 2009, I asked Deerfield Beach to take down its menorah and Nativity scene, and they were right to say no, because I was wrong on the law. I didn’t know that then. I do now. The Supreme Court upheld a menorah beside a Christmas tree at a Pittsburgh government building in 1989, and it has since ruled that a display a city owns and controls is the government speaking, so the city doesn’t have to make room for anyone else’s.
So, please go right ahead and buy a menorah, or let me donate one as a gift. Make it city property and keep it next to the tree through the eighth night. No Satanic display comes with it, and nothing for me to sue over. Hanukkah starts at sundown on December 4, so there’s still time.
What you can’t do is hand out a permit for a private display and walk away. That turns the lawn into a place where the public talks, and once that door opens, the city can’t stand in it picking which religions get through.
In 1993, Ohio let a rabbi put a menorah on Capitol Square, then turned away the Klan’s cross. In 1995, the Supreme Court said that once Ohio let private groups speak there, it couldn’t reject one for what its display said. Limiting the lawn to local houses of worship doesn’t fix that; it just picks who gets through the door.
In fact, last winter I traveled to Ohio to celebrate the Pinette ruling, standing on the Statehouse steps in 7-degree weather to put up a Consentivus pole, my ode to everyone’s freedom of speech and belief.
Commissioner Simmons also said he’d love a Nativity scene out there. A man who balks at the menorah because of what might show up beside it, while hoping for a manger, isn’t keeping religion off the lawn. He’s picking one.
And when a city puts up a manger and passes on the menorah, the Constitution has a whole clause about that.
He sits on the commission now, goes to Chabad’s menorah lightings, and told the room leadership should show up for everyone. Then, when it was time to say yes, he reached for me. He has until November 3 to answer one question. Commissioner, if you’re elected mayor, will you ask the commission to put a city-owned menorah next to the city’s tree this December? It’s a yes or a no, and I’ve already taken myself off the list of excuses.
My rule has always been all or none, never some. When I asked to give a Satanic invocation at your meetings in 2015, you chose none, and that was fair. Now choose again. A city menorah and a lawn closed to private displays are both lawful, and both are fine with me.
I don’t really care what you believe in: God, YHWH, SpongeBob SquarePants, hell, even Beelzebub. Matters not to me, and I will go to the mat protecting your freedom to choose.
But if the next commission opens that lawn and starts choosing, I’ll be at the permit counter that morning with an eight-foot Consentivus pole.
Approve Chabad’s permit and deny mine, and you already know how that ends. Broward Schools was silly enough to try it, and I taught them a lesson, pro se, as a matter of fact, in federal court.
Happy Hanukkah, a little early.
Chaz Stevens lives in Deerfield Beach, Florida, and is the owner of JoeSNITCH.com
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