Ugh, fucking vandals. Itâs nice that these Brickhouse Securities guys are helping out, even if it is probably just for publicity.
(InB4 someone tries to spin theft/vandalism as a freedom-of-religion protest.)
Well, since you brought it up⊠
Freedom of religion means the freedom to not have other people fuck with your religion, or to fuck with you in the name of theirs.
Believe whatever you want, but donât mess with what other people believe. Golden Rule, kids.
That said, why are we supposing anyone would consider this a freedom of religion protest? The article makes no mention of who might be stealing these decorations, or for what purpose. To instantly assume that it must be Atheists or the like acting out some sort of snarky protest is kind of presumptuous, no? 
Following a star to find baby Jesus is 1 BC technology; nowadays we use GPS.
Itâs never presumptuous to anticipate an argument about religion online
Churches have been using GPS to protect Nativity statues since at least 2010.
âFear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.â
Isnât that more than a trifle passive-agressive of you? The battle to keep assorted, mostly protestant, factions from marking their territory all over public buldings and lands is an active one, and the crazy notion that religious structures ought to obey the same zoning laws as everybody else gets floated from time to time; but Iâve never heard anybody assert that property crimes on somebodyâs own soil are a âfreedom of religionâ thing. They occasionally happen as a direct attack on a given religious faction, rather than as generic mayhem; but thatâs a very different category.
Can we, as logical people, decide NOT to use LoJack as a generic term for tracking technology?
I might buy the argument that itâs an appropriate way to describe purely direction/signal-intensity-based tracking, but thatâs not at all what weâre even talking about here. GPS is a position-based system: apples and oranges.
Five will get you ten that thatâs how it will be spun by the War-On-Xmas fundies. My guess is that itâs actually being done by bored kids.
The entity behind âLoJackâ has, itself, approved use of the term for something quite architecturally different. If they wish to genericize, I am happy to oblige them, probably even further than they are happy to have me do so.
Matthew 2:9: âWhen they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the GPS, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.â
OnStar!
Ugh. Steal the ones on public property, not the ones on private church property!
How about âLo-jack with a Kodakâ
Five will get you ten that thatâs how it will be spun by the War-On-Xmas fundies.
I had a weird moment in a K-Mart last month (as one does). I was buying Christmas cards for me mum to send out to the friends nâ family list, and out of the entire display of boxed cards, there were literally two sets that actually said âMerry Christmasâ on them. âHappy Holidays,â âPeace,â âJoy,â and so on. What really gave me the big big WTF, though, was a set of âHappy Winterâ cards.
âHappy Winter?â Huh.
So although Iâm not on board with the fundiesâ War On Christmas shtick - and no, my anecdote is not really data - I do think thereâs enough going on culturally these days to repeatedly poke the religiously paranoid in that particular way.
That one makes zero sense because pretty much all the assorted-cultural-events-around-this-time-of-year throughout history have been of the âHooray, the sun isnât actually fading forever and locking us into perpetual cold darkness!!!â flavor, with winter being the antagonist to varying degrees.
I know! Thatâs the one that made me notice the lack of actual âMerry Christmasâ cards - it was such a weird sentiment that it prompted me to look at all the other boxes in the display.
I can imagine someone stealing infant messiahs to make an Amélie-style photo album. Or maybe just swap le divin enfant in the manger for a garden gnome in swaddling clothes. It might never be noticed.
He was lost, but now he is found! Luke 15:32
