Roadside Shrines
There is an article in the NYTimes discussing whether spontaneous roadside shrines should be banned. The reasons against the shrines: 1. It is public space, and the shrines tend to use religious symbols (primarily crosses); thus, they violate separation of church and state. 2. In a related vein, they use public property for private purposes. 3. They are actually a danger; they can distract and, if someone stops to keep up the site, the can create additional hazard, especially on a busy street (this point, of course, varies from location to location, but, if the problem is that someone died in a car accident on a hazardous road, this creates greater hazard). The reasons to let them be: 1. Legislate all you want, but these shrines are weighted with a great deal of tradition, they are spontaneous, and represent a form of folk religion--the point is, legislate all you want, take them down, and people are going to do it anyway (I tend to agree with this point). 2. They help the griev...