STOCKTON SPRINGS, Maine — Police are investigating the spray-painting of several swastikas that happened sometime Monday night at Stockton Springs Community Church.
Mary Jane Costigan, a church member, said that she was at the town office on Tuesday morning when someone told her about the vandalism.
“It was really quite a shock,” she said. “Everybody was shocked and dismayed and angry. You don’t know what it is — is it a hate crime, or is it just kids’ vandalism? I don’t know. We’ve never had something like that before.”
She said there is a large blue swastika painted over the church’s double front doors, one on an outside sign that urged people to vote on Election Day, and a smaller, fainter swastika on the sign that bears the church’s name.
Waldo County Sheriff’s Deputy Ben Seekins noticed the blue Nazi symbol while driving by the downtown church Tuesday morning, according to Chief Deputy Jeff Trafton. He is investigating the criminal mischief.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the Waldo County Sheriff’s Office at 338-2040.
While the intention was to cause outrage and be seen as a hateful symbol, the swastika was not originally a sign of hatred.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika
And the very first Lee Harvey Oswald could have been a really nice guy.
Yes I know, the Natives were not haters.
Native whats?
Hatred is a fairly universal human trait.
Imbeciles. They’ve got it the wrong way round. That’s like painting ROMANES EUNT DOMUS on an aqueduct.
Romanes, they go, the house?
Not good.
They ought to be easy to catch. Stockton Springs is a busy body community, everyone knows everyones business.
Umm…that is the symbol of buddhism which is the swastika reversed which is what the picture shows. So either the church was defaced by militant buddhists or morons who don’t know which way a swastika is supposed to look.
I think I’ll go with morons, for the win.
Agreed. Morons.
Not mentioned in this article, but the church in question actually had a Vote No on Question 1 sign clearly visible out front. There’s more to the story. Find out more at https://www.facebook.com/ProtectMarriageMaine?
Isn’t one of the conditions of gaining a tax free status for religious institution that they stay out of politics?
no, that’s not one of the conditions. A church has every right to encourage people to vote according to biblical principles.
A lot of Baptist churches are preaching that from the pulpit. And Catholic churches are handing out “reminder” pamphlets.
redpoint86 – the answer to your question is “NO”. They is and never has been any such prohibition.
There are loads of churches with Yes on 1 signs, No one is complaining about that.
I’m not complaining, just asking a question.
Haven’t seen that but an article in yesterday’s Wall Sreet Journal on SSM votes quoted Rev. Wagner of an Episcopal church in Maine. His wife wrote a scathing anti-liberal anti-SSM column in the BDN a week ago. They have a No on 1 sign out front.
Certain churches have a history of being political, Rev Wright comes to mind. Not that there aren’t others, but they are mostly liberal churches.
Oh really. How about most Baptist and other conservative churches. For Rs, anti-SSM, etc.
But “conservative” churches that use the pulpit for politics are subject to IRS investigation, liberal, socialist, progressive or liberation churches are not even sublect to media scrutiny.
Would that it were, would that it were.
No, everybody is allowed to have an opinion. Nobody has the right to deface other’s property, though they could have stood outside the church on Sunday and called them all Nazis. Better yet, they could have met with clergy members and discussed the topic rationally. Too late for that.
No actually the IRS came out and said that they have no authority to go after those churches who voice there opinion !
This one is not a hate crime?
444444444
To the person who did this:
Really, is this really necessary? Listen, I’m an atheist, and I’m as much anti-religion as anyone, believe me. But this is foolish, makes you look stupid.If you’re really anti-religion, if you’re really opposed to belief in God, you’re NOT going to sway anyone’s opinion that secularism is the way to go, by being stupid.
All you did was hurt what (presumably) your own cause is.
These dopes can not even get being ignorant right! lol. Pretty pathetic.
Looks to me that the perps are a bunch of dolts that can’t even get hate right. The swastika is backwards.
Again…. happened in Bangor also…. stupid kids
What should warrant our concern is the many people in Maine who subscribe to that philosophy who don’t run about with a spray can.
The frightening thing is that they have no idea that they could be characters in a book by Sinclair Lewis. Or that they have gradually come to accept as normal a way of life that Eisenhower and their grandparents spent a lot of time and money to defeat elsewhere.
Twelve years ago if you’d told me that they were a force to be reckoned with in Maine I would have laughed in your face.
Then I chanced to read on the air a definition I copied out of the Encyclopedia Britannica. It simply told you how to tell one when you saw one. Although you’ve probably read it often in the encyclopedia for yourself, I’ll repeat here that it is a “radical totalitarian political philosophy that combines elements of corporatism, extreme nationalism, anti- liberalism, militarism and authoritarianism.”
And after reading that definition on the air they came out of the woodwork like fleas.
Ignorance is nothing to laugh at. Do you think that the person with that spray can had any idea of what that symbol meant?
The humble Farmer
The Searsport District Middle/High
School Civil Rights Team is shocked and saddened to learn that the
Stockton Springs Community church has been vandalized. A large
Swastika was painted on their double doors. The swastika is a nazi
symbol that was used in world war II and represents the holocaust and
the killing of 6 million Jewish people as well as other targeted
groups. The Searsport District Middle and High School Civil Rights
team is here to raise awareness about bias based discrimination and
prejudice. We send our best wishes to the Stockton Community Church
and hope that this kind of vandalism that could also be a potential
civil rights violation is resolved soon.