Copyright 1999 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
View Related Topics
December 3, 1999, Friday, Final Edition
SECTION: METRO; Pg. B01
LENGTH: 662 words
HEADLINE: Fairfax Surrenders in Battle of the Creche; County to Let Woman Erect Holiday
Display
BYLINE: Brooke A. Masters, Washington Post Staff Writer
BODY:
The four-year battle of the Creche Lady vs. Fairfax County is over.
County officials cried
"uncle" this week and said they will not contest a federal appeals court's ruling that
Rita Warren has a constitutional right to put religious displays outside the
county government center.
In celebration, Warren, 71, went out and bought statues of the three kings and
a shepherd to add to her waist-high
Nativity scene. The whole display will go up at the government center Dec. 20, after visits to
the governor's office in Richmond and Fairfax City Hall.
"I'm going Monday to speak to the [county] Board of Supervisors to tell them
there's no hard feelings," said Warren,
"that the victory is not mine, it's for God and the people who can go to the
government center and see the First Amendment work."
J. Patrick Taves, a county lawyer, said he could not comment on Fairfax's
decision, referring callers to board Chairman Katherine K. Hanley (D). Hanley
did not return repeated telephone calls.
Warren doesn't look like a formidable opponent. A tiny, white-haired lady who
depends on the kindness of friends and strangers to pay for her legal fees, her
station wagon and even the figures in her displays, she has no ill words for
supervisors and others who have opposed her displays.
Federal officials know Warren well. In June 1979, she
drove a hearse up to the U.S. Capitol and held a funeral for Uncle Sam. She's
been back off and on ever since--with Crucifixion scenes at Easter, creches at
Christmas and religious displays all summer.
An Italian war bride who never shed her accent, Warren attributes her interest
in religious freedom to the repression she encountered under Fascist dictator
Benito Mussolini, and her faith to the survival of her older daughter, who was
born disabled and has endured numerous surgeries.
Over coffee in her cozy first-floor apartment, Warren related how God and Jesus
tell her what to do and what targets to take on. She began bringing a life-size
figure of Jesus to the Capitol because a voice told her,
"Put me on the Capitol steps," she said. In 1991, she organized a reenactment of the Crucifixion in Moscow
after the same
voice told her to go to the Soviet Union.
Fairfax County drew Warren's attention in 1995, after the U.S. Supreme Court
ruled that governments must allow religious displays anywhere other displays
are permitted. The county allowed Warren's creche that year but then rewrote
its rules to prohibit nonresidents from erecting displays. Warren lives outside
the county, in Fairfax City.
When several conservative lawyers rejected her case, Warren got help from an
unexpected source, the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU had
traditionally argued against religious displays, but the group believed the new
Fairfax rules infringed on free-speech rights.
The ACLU hooked Warren up with Alexandria lawyer Victor Glasberg. Warren says
that knowing Glasberg, who is Jewish, has given her new perspective.
"I used to think the Jews didn't like the
Christian people," she said. Now she includes a menorah in several of her displays and is buying
a Hanukah card for Glasberg's mother.
Next on Warren's agenda: a mandatory moment of silence in Virginia
public schools. State law allows such moments, but Warren wants to require them.
State Sen. Warren E. Barry (R-Fairfax) has agreed to submit the bill for
consideration--provided the legislature's lawyers think it constitutionally
permissible.
"She's a constituent and an activist and deserves to be heard," Barry said.
Warren is sure it will pass.
"If you love the people who don't agree with you enough, [the love] will come
back to you," she said.
"Miracles happen every day."
Rita Warren shows off the creche she will erect this year. A Hanukah menorah
lights the scene. Rita Warren said her
victory over Fairfax County is
"for God and the people who can go to the government center and see the First
Amendment work."
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: December 03, 1999
