“Christian privilege” in Colorado mountain town’s amphitheater fuels church-and-state storm

Freedom from Religion Foundation attorneys are demanding an end to any preferential treatment for the Dillon Community Church. The rival First Liberty Institute sent a countervailing letter urging continued use, warning that recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions favor greater mixing of church and state.

Town officials charge a $25,000 fee for promoters of town-sponsored concerts. ... The church paid a $1,100 annual rental fee,

Attorneys with the Texas-based First Liberty Institute, a conservative Christian legal organization devoted to”restoring religious liberty,” have prevailed in cases at the U.S. Supreme Court, where justices have decided that “history and tradition” must be considered in determining whether government is too intertwined with religion.

Thanks for the link - I visited that town last year and was quite surprised how nice that amphitheater is.

Church and state should be kept separate. We're seeing wayyy too much mixing of the two lately. But still, the best solution is the one that works best for everyone, not just the majority. In this case, that would seem to be allowing everyone equal and paid access to the facility or nobody gets access.

History and tradition should obviously not be the entirety of the decision making process and recent events should outweigh things that happened 100 years ago. Otherwise, we block all progress and if that were a good idea, we might still have slavery.

The idealist in me would hope that these people could work something out without getting lawyers involved.

All of this IMO, clearly.

This would be so different if the church was the satanic temple or a mosque that was using the public land.

Woof, I'd be sympathetic to an argument that because they're a constant and steady customer they would get a discount over one time users. But a thousand bucks for every Sunday of the year? That's outrageous. That's just clear and obvious favoritism. Also seems like theft.