Hecate and Quetzalcoatl

[Eric W. Treene]

Proving again that truth is stranger than hypo, in Alvarado v. City of San
Jose, 94 F.3d 1223 (9th Cir. 1996) the Ninth Circuit upheld the display of a
statue of the Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl, a plumed serpent, in a city park.
The city had commissioned a sculpture on Mexican and Spanish culture to the
city, and the artist selected the specific subject. It was challenged on
Establishment Grounds.

The plaintiff argued 1)that worship of Quetzalcoatl was experiencing a
resurgence among the Zapatista rebels in southern Mexico; 2) that two New
Age writers had written books advocating Quetzalcoatl worship; and 3) that
some Mormon missionaries had taught that Quetzalcoatl was an incarnation of
Jesus.

The Court, applying the endorsement test, found none of these to be
sufficient to make the statute an Establishment Clause violation:

"The reasonable observer is not an expert on esoteric religions, nor can he
or she be turned into one by any publicity generated by plaintiffs' lawsuit.
Furthermore, a reasonable observer cannot be expected to infer
an endorsement of the religion practiced by a revolutionary group in
southern Mexico."

I think the Court got it right, certainly under the endorsement test, but
also, I think, under more general Establishment Clause principles.  The
Ninth Circuit noted that "Establishment cases usually, though not always,
involve well-known religions, because these are most likely
to generate the dangers the clause is designed to prevent."  Whether the
danger is real or merely perceived union of political power and religion, it
seems that numbers have to matter (though not just raw numbers, for if a
town of 50 citizen favored an esoteric religion with 20 adherents, all of
whom lived in that town, therewould be a problem).

Eric Treene