Neary Commentary

Sidebar:
Newburyport Mayor
Officially Eliminates
Free Speech

The mayor of Newburyport eliminated Free Speech last month.

She said, “Just because you allow people to speak on public property doesn’t mean that they can say what they want.”

She says she consulted her city solicitor but lawyers were only shaking their heads in disbelief. The town has been sued because it solicited residents to buy $60 bricks for a walkway and then removed two of the bricks which had inscriptions, “For All the Unborn Children” and “Jesus Loves You.”

The attorney for the two women who had bought the bricks told the Daily News, “The city doesn’t have to allow private individuals to put messages on bricks, but since the government allowed the brick walkway to be used for private expression, it can’t pick and choose.”

The woman who bought the “unborn” brick told the newspaper, “I lost a baby in the late part of my pregnancy. Because I came home from the hospital with only a baby blanket, because my daughter wasn’t born alive, that’s why my brick says ‘For All the Unborn Children.’ It was a closure for our family that the brick was there.” She said that the removal was due to somebody’s intolerance and a misinterpretation that her message was political.

Guest Comment
What Tragic Shape the Commonwealth is in!

How any politician could call 'offensive' a woman's broken-hearted commemoration of her lost baby is
beyond the human imagination.

January 30, 2001

What tragic shape the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is in when an inscription on a brick in Newburyport – paid for by private funds – that says “for all the Unborn Children” is removed by an elected official under the pretense that it is a violation of the principle of separation of Church and State or of any other law or article of the Constitution of the United States of America.

And how anyone could find “offensive” a simple and heartfelt dedication to a member of our human family who is not with us today travels beyond my imagination. As one who taught Politics and Government as well as U.S History for some years, I find it hardly believable that this state and Nation has descended to such a low that it makes a mockery of the principles on which a modern democracy and liberty were founded.

Political correctness, intolerance of traditional values and contempt for innocent human life are now so virulent that the moral fibre of this state has apparently eroded to the point where the mere mention of an unborn child is considered vile.

Ray Neary,
President
Massachusetts Citizens for Life

Newburyport Sued for Censoring
Pro-Life and Religious Expression
Daily News of Newburyport