Drawing political lines in San Anselmo

Marin is one of America’s bluest bastions, and San Anselmo is one of the bluest parts, with a lot of grown up (sort of) hippie types, but there are still little dots of red, some of whom are very assertive in their beliefs. So it is that in San Anselmo, home to John Walker Lindh, a resident is in the news for hanging an Arab straw man in effigy in front of his home:

An effigy of a man in Arab headdress hanging from a gallows in a San Anselmo yard has become the latest public display of politics to raise eyebrows in a town becoming known for that type of thing.

Pat La Tray, 57, built the gallows for the straw effigy – which has an American flag piercing its heart – after police asked him to take it out of a tree on town property in front of his house at 330 Greenfield Ave. He built the effigy for Halloween, but said he has decided to leave it up as a symbol of his support for troops fighting in the Iraq war and his stance against terrorism.

“It is a patriotic symbol,” La Tray said. “It has nothing to do with race or religion.”

Nearby resident Pilar Sinelnikoff said she doesn’t care what La Tray says. The effigy offends her every time she walks by it.

“I’m appalled he calls himself an American,” she said. “He’s pathetic.”

During the past couple of years, San Anselmo has become a hotbed of public political displays and disputes over them.

Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a man painted a large American flag on his wooden fence along Center Boulevard near the Fairfax border. He reversed the boards on the fence after a vandal kept spray-painting it.

***

Town Administrator Debbie Stutsman said there has only been one formal complaint about La Tray’s effigy, and she said he does not appear to violate town law. He quickly complied with police requests to move the effigy out of the town’s tree.

Stutsman said she classifies the effigy as a type of political sign if it is in support of troops and against terrorism. There are no plans to do anything about it, she added.

“You know, it’s a freedom of speech issue,” she said. “We know about that stuff.”

La Tray said he moved to the house in 2002 with his wife, Nong. As a veteran of several wars, he said he is offended people don’t stand up for American troops.

“I’m an American to the bone,” he said. “For me, it is strictly about Islamo-fascism.”

La Tray noted that he proudly displays several American flags – including one painted on the address marker on his curb – and he is angry that someone wants to say what he can display on his own property. People in Marin would cheer if the effigy looked like President Bush, he said.

“I don’t live for my neighbors,” he said. “They can turn their head and walk away.”

***

When asked her thoughts about the effigy, Nong La Tray, who is a citizen of Thailand and moved here in 2002, said she has no problem with it. She said Muslims were oppressive in her home country.

“They’re not good people,” she said.

Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Washington D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, said he hears about similar displays from time to time across the country and understands the frustration caused by terrorism. But, he added, there are better ways to express opposition to it that don’t reinforce stereotypes against Arabs or Muslims who don’t participate.

“I don’t think this would promote interfaith understanding,” he said.

Oscar Espinoza, 45, who lives across the street, said he noticed the effigy around Halloween and doesn’t care what the La Trays do as long as they aren’t breaking the law.

“I don’t have time to get offended,” he said.

The article is interesting on its face, but I also found it intriguing because I learned from an extremely reputable source that John Lindh was not an anomaly but, instead, that he was representative of other radical Islamist activists living in Marin.

I’ll add that I think La Tray could have found a more tasteful way to express his patriotic views, but that the town manager is right — it’s freedom of speech, and the antidote, if you’re one who disagrees with him, is more speech, not censorship.

UPDATE:  On the subject of free expression, Patrick, my favorite Paragraph Farmer, alerted me to the fact that it was secular Jews who got very worried about the menorah at the Seattle Airport, because they believe it is a slippery slope leading right back to the creche.  Better a pagan tree, than a religious icon.  (By the way, the rabbi who threatened to sue over the menorah did so because the Port Authority ignored his request for months.  It was not his goal to get rid of Christmas trees.  He wanted to augment the public square, not destroy it.)

Somehow, in my mind, the above news goes with a story I read today at Michelle Malkin that carolers were asked to be quiet so as not to upset Sasha Cohen, the Jewish skater.  There was no indication that Cohen cared one way or the other.  There was just the assumption that someone of one faith would be irreparably damaged by some sign that another person, of another faith, was in the same environment.  It frightens me that we’ve gone from a public square where religion can be freely practiced without government coercion, to a situation in which everyone is frightened that someone else may express a religious sentiment.  This is an insane inversion of the freedom of religion the Founders gave as their gift to America.
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