| Tonight,
January 15, at 7:30 PM, the Monroe City Council will decide whether to
pass a new city sign ordinance to replace an ordinance passed in March of
2001 which turned out to be unconstitutional. Because of that, the City
was forced to drop it along with numerous violation charges against
members of Christ the King Church. The City ended up paying Christ the
King Church's legal fees and paying reparations to church members who had
been arrested. As a part of the settlement, the City dropped two other
city ordinances which had been unconstitutionally used to harass members
of Christ the King Church during their public ministry activities.
Under the now defunct sign ordinance, members of Christ the King
Church were repeatedly arrested for picketing with signs larger than three
square feet while documented flagrant violations of the ordinance by
businesses were ignored by the City. Reporting on that first ordinance,
the Monroe Times (January 3, 2002) wrote that one of the City's attorneys,
Kevin Reak, admitted that it "appears to have been written with
Christ the King Church abortion protests in mind, which makes it
biased." In that same article, Monroe Police Chief Fred Kelley stated
about the ordinance and its enforcement: "It seemed as though we were
singling out Ovadal and his group." During the sign ordinance battle,
Monroe police also began arresting members of Pastor Ovadal's church for
simply preaching the gospel.
Under the proposed new ordinance, the city square of Monroe and
several blocks around it would be off limits for signs larger than three
square feet (example: 1.5" x 2"). Other areas of the city would
not be under the same restriction. Pastor Ovadal and a number of his
congregation will be attending the city council meeting this evening.
"The Monroe City Council should be ashamed of
their new scheme to turn Monroe's city square into Red Square by severely
curtailing free speech in that area where Planned Parenthood has an
office. No other city in Wisconsin has gone to such pains to suppress free
speech. For our part, we are committed to fight this next round in defense
of the First Amendment with as much or more vigor than the last one. To
paraphrase Winston Churchill, `We shall fight them in the courts; we shall
fight them on the public sidewalks. . . . We shall never give up.'"
Pastor Ralph Ovadal, Christ the King Church
*Renamed Pilgrims Covenant Church
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