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One of the plaintiffs was a chronic graduate student and the rest of us were teachers, from the secondary level and up. Two were from the sciences, one was from the social sciences, and four of us (including the graduate student) were from various English departments.

Literature corrupts and absolute literature corrupts absolutely? Maybe, maybe not.

In a larger demographic, where a smaller percentage of the population depends on education for its livelihood, perhaps the plaintiffs might have come from a wider range of vocations, but in our college town of about forty-five thousand, the division fell clearly between town and gown. We plaintiffs fell all too neatly into the pointy-headed intellectual stereotype that the more stridently fundamentalist opposition branded us as, while they claimed the salt-of-the-earth ground for themselves.

When the attorney for Americans United for Separation of Church and State became involved, her prompt and pointed queries were met with dilatory and vague replies from the city's counsel. In fairness, some of his replies were necessarily slow because some of them had to be based on a sense of the commissioners' wishes, and most of those wishes had to be discussed and clarified in open meetings occurring weekly on Tuesday evenings (naturally, because of the threat of legal action, some discussion might have occurred in closed session as well); in contrast, the plaintiffs' communication with the AU counsel occurred swiftly by way of e-mail several times a week, and on at least one occasion, by way of a conference call.

With an election in the fall and some city commission seats up for grabs, both sides were feeling some urgency. The editorial pages of the local paper grew rancorous. My own bias prevents me from recognizing all the faults of those who sided with the plaintiffs, but I suspect proponents of removal erred more than once in fact or in tone. Nightly, however, I would find myself reading the letters to the editor and tossing the paper aside, muttering "pinhead" as opponent after opponent misidentified AU as the ACLU, the greater satan. The more extreme writers, after declaring their own faith, would identify the U.S. as a Christian nation and the plaintiffs as members of a satanic cabal. Although no assaults or acts of vandalism occurred as a result of the dissension in town, the war of words was vitriolic.

What was clear to the plaintiffs from the outset -- and less clear to the general public on both sides of the issue -- was that a suit would have to be filed regardless of any decision by this particular commission. There were two good reasons for this. First, if the election produced a majority that would vote to relocate the monument, what would prevent a subsequent commission from voting to return the monument to city hall? I'm unclear on all the nuances of the law, but generally, one commission has very limited capabilities to bind future commissions to its decisions, unless some overriding authority is in place, such as a contract or a court order. Second, Americans United took this case at no expense to the plaintiffs (and the plaintiffs became involved with no prospect of financial gain) and their expenses were mounting. A suit would insure that AU might recover expenses.

The attorney for AU made clear to the plaintiffs that the decision to file suit or not would remain the plaintiffs' choice. Despite AU's wish not to expend their resources in costly rearguard actions, they would proceed with the case even if we did not wish to require the city to pay their legal expenses. That is, if the plaintiffs chose to proceed with the suit to gain a binding agreement with the city but without stipulating payment for AU expenses (a route that might have made our suit more palatable to many of the fence-straddlers in town), the AU would pursue the matter with the same vigor as they would if they could expect reimbursement of expenses. Americans United was consummately fair and aboveboard with the plaintiffs throughout the process, and the plaintiffs unanimously decided to include reimbursement of AU's legal expenses in the suit.

Only the timing of the suit remained to be settled. We decided to postpone the filing of the suit until after the election in the fall.

Many different issues were at stake in the fall city commission election, but for most folks around town, the election became a referendum on the issue of the ten commandments monument. The outcome of the election? Four incumbents remained in place, but voters unseated one social conservative, replacing him with a more liberal candidate. We plaintiffs had what we felt was a 3-2 majority friendly to our cause.

And the suit was filed.

to be continued...

"We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion."
-- T. S. Eliot