The city council in a small Iowa town voted to remove a temporary memorial to fallen soldiers from a city park.

The memorial was removed because an anti-Christian group Americans United for Separation of Church and State swooped down on the city with a threatening letter, demanding that the town council remove a temporary display to veterans that had been placed in the city’s Young Park, because the display consisted of a silhouette of a kneeling soldier and a cross. Only a day after the council voted to remove the memorial, the town voted to remove the council members.

Based on the complaint of a single citizen of Knoxville, Iowa, the anti-Christian group Americans United for Separation of Church and State swooped down on the city with a threatening letter, demanding that the town council remove a temporary display to veterans that had been placed in the city’s Young Park.

Because the display consisted of a silhouette of a kneeling soldier and a cross, the anti-Christian group claimed that the cross violated the separation of church and state and that it amounted to the city endorsing Christianity.

The silhouette display was meant as a sort of temporary place keeper while local townspeople raised the money for a permanent statue to veterans that was to decorate the park. (Hopefully the permanent statue will look just like this one).

With the threats of lawsuits from the anti-Christian group ringing in their ears, on November 2, the city council met and decided in a 3 to 2 vote to remove the display. Knoxviile City Council members April Verwers, Carolyn Formanek, and David Roozeboom were the three votes in favor of removing the display.

But the town was almost universally unhappy with the decision, and immediately after the council’s vote, some 2,000 small white crosses were placed in front yards all over town in support of the memorial.

Further, in the week before the city council’s vote, citizens had apparently warned the officials that if they voted to remove the display, their political careers were in jeopardy. As it happened, the day after the council voted to remove the display was election day and, much to the council members’ dismay, the town rose up and voted them out of office just as they warned they’d do.

Sources: Mad World News/Facebook/ Photo Credit: Washington Times