Reply #280: What part of private property is so hard to deal with here?

[politicat]

It's private property. I would get annoyed with someone putting a couple of crosses on my lawn, too. If some stranger died on my property, I can guarantee you that the LAST thing I would want to deal with is people trespassing on my land to deal with their grief. Yeah, I'd feel bad, but you know, a couple of million strangers die every day. I can't feel bad for all of them. I'd go crazy. And some stranger dying on my land would be something I would want to move on from and put behind me. The landowner didn't cause her death and shouldn't be forced to live with a constant reminder of weepy boyfriend trespassing on his land. EVERY . DAMN. DAY. I live off a busy street. A couple of speeding cars have ploughed through the privacy fence that borders my neighborhood. I wouldn't allow a shrine on my land for such an accident. Sorry if that's cold, but it's not my fault that someone drove recklessly.

Besides, if the dead woman was Christian (and with crosses, it would be silly to assume Hindu or Jaina, wouldn't it?) it's not like her soul is hanging around. There's no Christian doctrine for that. She's in Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory, but not hanging out with the other cornflake girls on Route 62. If the boyfriend wants to grieve, he'd be better off doing it someplace where he's not breaking the law.

For that matter, I don't like the shrines on public thoroughfares, either, because they pose a hazard to bicyclists and pedestrians who use the shoulder as a transportation route, and to motorcyclists who can be seriously injured if they end up hitting one (after being hit by a car or sliding on water, ice or oil, for example.) If I have to detour into the traffic lane to avoid someone's roadside shrine, I'm a) breaking the law by entering the traffic lane, and b) putting myself at HIGH risk of becoming hamburger. Not everyone is in a car, after all. And protecting the lives of the living is far more important than enshrining the dead. That's why we have cemeteries.

Personally, I think the boyfriend is being just as much of an asshole. If you read the article, he has not even ASKED the property owner for the stuff. He just went to TV with it to demonize the allegedly mean, evil atheist. (The TV station is quoting a paper that the property owner said it was atheism that motivated the removals, but since the property owner is not speaking to the media, who knows what's really going on.) And if boyfriend hasn't even had the intestinal fortitude to ask the property owner what's up, how did he know he had two months to keep crosses there? Trespassing. Period. Dude, grow a spine and deal. And you know, if this had been a black, single woman from Southie, this never would have made the papers. It's the white woman from Leominster that gets this kind of press.

If that stuff was so 'effin important to the guy that knocked up the white, blonde, preggers, unemployed chick (they weren't married and she didn't work, after all) he should have taken it home. Duh.

And no, I don't care about the fetus. If it isn't born, I refuse to give it rights as a person. I just draw that line, sorry. Yeah, mean old reproductive rights protecting Pcat. That's me.