Religious group wants monument in Duchesne park

A Salt Lake-based religious group asked a federal judge Wednesday to allow it to erect a monument displaying member beliefs near a Ten Commandments monument in Duchesne.

Summum wants to display its Seven Aphorisms in Roy Park, where the Ten Commandments monolith has stood for nearly 25 years. To deny Summum a similar avenue of expression is a violation of the group's First Amendment rights, attorney Brian Barnard said.

"My client simply wants to have access to those same forums as Duchesne has allowed the Cole family and the Lions Club," he said.

The monument was donated to the city in 1979 by the Cole family, longtime residents of Duchesne. The 5-foot tall, 2 1/2-foot-wide marble tablet stood in the park, on city-owned land, until last August when city leaders transferred ownership of the small parcel of land to the Duchesne Lions Club.

The Lions Club paid $10 for the 10-foot-by-11-foot plot at the edge of the city park. City attorney Cindy Barton-Coombs said Wednesday that the sale was also in exchange for some 10,000 community-service hours from club members.

Barton-Coombs admitted the transfer was made to avoid litigation over the Ten Commandments display, a move U.S. District Judge Dee Benson said may have come too late.

The judge compared the city's actions with a bank robber handing stolen money back to the teller as police move into the bank, claiming he no longer wants the cash.

Benson suggested the city might be best served by simply retaking ownership of the land and removing the monolith altogether.

"It may be that your only solution is to take the monument down," he said.

Summum has filed similar lawsuits in Salt Lake, Ogden and Pleasant Grove. In the Salt Lake and Ogden cases, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the monuments could remain on public land only if the cities allowed others to erect equivalent displays.

Both cities opted to remove the monoliths. The Pleasant Grove monument remains on public property as the case works its way through U.S. District Court.

Benson took Summum's motion for a temporary restraining order under advisement and said he would issue a ruling as quickly as possible.

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E-mail: awelling@desnews.com