Florida Homeowners Association Vs. Jesus (Sign)

By on July 31, 2011 in News 31

Via First Coast News:

Four years ago Sarah Phillips moved into her Sutton Lakes home and said she has never had a problem, until now. “We’ve had it out about a month. We haven’t had any complaints from the neighbors…, said Phillips.

Phillips has posted a Jesus sign in her yard and there was no reaction from anyone until she received a letter from the Sutton Lakes Homeowners Association telling her having it in her yard is a violation of the covenant. “It is basically telling us to remove the sign, under the bylaws,” she said. Phillips said she did sign the Covenant, Conditions and Restrictions, or CCR, but never agreed to allow the free exercise of her religion to be prohibited.

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  • Elmyr23

    its not communism, its not socialism, its capitalism you fucks.

  • http://twitter.com/jasonpaulhayes jasonpaulhayes

    http://www.zombiedefense.org … that’s all I have to say about that!

  • DeepCough

    Homeowner’s associations tend to be a bit Nazi-ish, especially when they get people to sign their ludicrous agreements of absolute residential conformity, but hey, that’s the suburbs for ya.

  • Nunzio X

    She should appeal to Jesus to have his father strike the members of the neighborhood association dead, or at least infect them with shingles—-but only the right kind of shingles, according to the association’s bylaws and covenants.

  • Rex Vestri

    She signed her rights to put dumbass shit like that in her yard away when she signed the HOA contract. Tough shit. She should’ve read what she was signing more carefully. If she wants to put tacky shit on display in her front yard let her move somewhere that doesn’t have a homeowner’s association.

  • Sean Connor

    It’s just an ad for my gardener Jesus Gonzales.

  • Tuna Ghost

    He does good work, he deserves a little credit

  • Hadrian999

    typical rules are for everybody else christian mentality

  • Nirvanasteve

    Since when has a profession of one’s belief in Christ meant merely putting his name on a sign? I include bumper stickers and t-shirts in this ludicrous display of personal religious advertisement. The Man himself said that you would know his followers by their works, not a big ol’ Jesus sign in the front yard. Has our spiritual disconnect reached such a state that merely stating a name counts as faith? Speaking as an ex-Christian, I am not impressed. 

  • Anonymous

    Dumbass is looking at the wrong part of the 1st amendment. Nobody’s doing a damn thing to infringe on her right to freedom of religion. What she’s looking for is freedom of speech/expression. And limiting that is all homeowners asociations _do_. That’s precisely why they exist!

  • Anonymous

    A simple solution presents itself: move the sign to the living room, so she can remind herself of Jesus all day. 

  • Anon

    she may signed it, but you can’t sign away your higher rights

  • Hadrian999

    constitutional rights only when apply when dealing with the government, private organizations and businesses have much greater freedom with respect to them, personally I would never live anywhere with a homeowners association but she signed the agreement and has no one to blame but herself.

  • Honu

    There is no ‘higher rights’ Anon.  She joined a HOA and by doing so you agree to comply with the bylaws and CCR’s of that hoa.  HOA’s often have rules restricting signage.  This has nothing to do with freedom of religion or right to free speech.  An HOA is a private entity and if you are a member then you comply.  You can always change the bylaws and CCR’s by having the whole HOA vote on those changes and voila…put your anachronistic belief system all over your yard if you want.

  • KxBk6U

    No one is restricting her right to practice her religion or her right to free speech. What they are restricting is her violation of the agreement she signed. So, take down the sign and shut the hell up.

  • http://buzzcoastin.posterous.com BuzzCoastin

    Jesus saw this report and commented, “That fat butch bytch needs to take down the sign and go on a diet.  Once she’s as hot as the Spanish chick with the Virgin Mary statues, she could put the sign back up. I’m sick and tired of fat, stupid hayseeds representing me. Jesus Kripes, even Scientology gets better followers than me.”

  • http://www.facebook.com/elpolloloco52 Josh Adkisson

    Who reads contracts?

  • Anonymous

    Actually they don’t. Simple legal standpoint, constitution over-rules criminal law and criminal law over-rules contract law. It is illegal to write into any contract any condition that infringes criminal law. No condition of contract can break the law, in fact any condition that does, can in fact break the whole contract.
    So freedom of speech is provided in the constitution, as such no criminal law can deny anyone the freedom of speech and subsequently no contract condition can deny someone the freedom of speech.
    It is and always has been all bluff and bluster on the part of contract lawyers. The only time it ever really comes into play, is when someone’s ‘continued payment’ be it monetary reward or a service  can be denied if they do not maintain there agreed silence (they are being paid to be silent), constitutionally applying a penalty for failing to keep silence would be illegal (you really need to brush up on your Contract Law).
    Constitutional rights are maintained at all times by the law in all circumstances, whilst a person can temporarily suspend their rights (more a legal illusion rather than an actual reality), make no mistake that can immediately enforce them again just by saying so and no one, neither government, corporation nor individual can enforce that illusory suspension of rights.

  • Simiantongue

    Who in their everloving right mind would move to a neighborhood that had a homeowners association? That is fracking insane. When I need my neighbors to tell me how to run my homestead I’ll ask their opinion.

  • Rex Vestri

    Intelligent people do

  • Anonymous

    Freedom of speech only applies to public laws. If a private organization wants to abridge your freedom of speech in places that the private organization controls, then it’s perfectly legal. It happens all the time. Employers are always placing certain types of expression as verboten within the workplace and they’re well within their rights to fire you for breaking their prohibition. Home owners associations are private entities.

  • http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

    Archetypal jesus crispie…sign away their rights to get something they want…then get upset when they notice the loss of them. Its a homeowners assoc…they are twisted nazi fetishist scum…never sign anything they hand you. If you do…you’re too stupid to deserve the ‘free exercise’ of anything. Caveat Emptor, skank.

  • http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

    At that point…she’d have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the display of lawn signs is a mandatory tenet of her faith…the denial of which would infringe on her religious freedom. In this case…there is no religion that has as its tenet the display of lawn signs as a condition of membership…therefore its just a personal preference…which she contractually signed away.

  • http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

    Amen…there is no sect of the Christian faith that mandates the use of lawn signs as a tenet of belief…they are personal displays unrelated to the actual practice of their faith…ergo…they get no consideration or protection.

  • http://www.facebook.com/elpolloloco52 Josh Adkisson

    So intelligent people are always telling the truth when they click, “I have read and agree to the terms and conditions”?

    Yeah, she probably should have, but come on. Most people, even intelligent people, don’t read contracts (That’s why 7000 users of GameStation ended up selling their immortal souls to a game retailer). They’re entirely inhuman and bureaucratic, hence why they are the ideological basis of capitalist social theory. You may not agree with her putting a sign with “Jesus” on it up in her yard–heck I don’t agree with it (I don’t agree with her having a large house in the suburbs either, when hundreds of millions live without houses, but whatever)–but that does not mean you have to go and characterize her as an idiot for not reading the contract. Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t (or maybe the word “idiot” has no real meaning), but neither of us can really know based on 1:26 of video footage.

  • Rex Vestri

    I read them.  If you don’t, that’s your problem.
    I still think she is an idiot.  Based on what you’ve written I now think you’re an idiot too.

  • http://www.facebook.com/elpolloloco52 Josh Adkisson

    And the internet is the realm from which you draw such conclusions, and the medium through which you broadcast them, eh? You’ve a lot to learn, friend.

    Really, stop performing for all the people you don’t know and aren’t talking to. If you want to have a discussion with me, the person to whom you are responding, then do so. If you want to gather internet-applause by posting comments in which you assume the guise of a wit (and a rather poor one at that), then I have better use of my time, as do you.

  • Anonymous

    I love the disinfo readers. On any other website they would be yammering about “freedom of speech/religion”  This is one of the only sites I’ve seen where the people (well most) actually understand the 1st amendment protects you from the government infringing on those rights. It does not protect a person when they sign an agreement before moving into a neighborhood that prohibits signs.

  • Earaches

    Josh, no need to be such an assh*le. There’s a huge difference between clicking a button on an iTunes agreement and buying property (and living in a community). Adults are responsible for the contracts they sign. If you don’t want to live in anti-Jesus-sign-land, don’t sign on the dotted line. You sound like someone who doesn’t care to be held accountable for his own actions. Too bad for you.

  • http://www.facebook.com/elpolloloco52 Josh Adkisson

    I’m not saying I don’t want to be held accountable for my actions. I’m saying that the reaction to this “news story” is ridiculous, for a variety of reasons. The first is that the commentators on here are basically saying “tough shit, you should’ve read the contract,” and implying that she somehow lacks intelligence for “failing to read the contract.” This makes little sense to me as a response. For one, “tough shit” is the second most dicky response possible, the first being “Good. I’m glad they called her out on it.” Second, because,as I said before, nobody reads contracts. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be held accountable for what you sign, but at least add a little humanity to the whole process. People send pieces of paper because they are cowards who don’t actually want to deal with real people and open up the possibility of, say, talking to the person about what exactly is acceptable. It’s too much trouble in our enlightened age, apparently. But third, and most importantly, no one who has commented knows jack shit about the contract. All the minute and a half revealed was that 1) the homeowners’ association wants her to remove a sign with “Jesus” on it, claiming that she is violating a contract 2) she thinks they are infringing on her religious liberty, 3) her neighbors said nothing about it beforehand, and 4) one of her neighbors, who has religious imagery in her yard, thinks that the homeowners’ association is being stupid.

    The thing is, whatever the rule she violated is, it is not a rule about religion, but about signs. I highly doubt they would entirely ban signs (what about the security system signs that nearly every subdivision has?), so it has to have some conditions–perhaps size. Seeing as her sign is rather small, I would have to wonder if the person who reported it actually got out and measured it, or checked whatever conditions are necessary to allow signs. And if they did, assuming that there wer conditions under which she could have a similar sign (which there likely were), why did they not knock on her door and inform her that the sign violated those conditions, but that she could fix them by doing x, y, and z?

    This last part is, of course, all speculation–as I said, no one who has commented knows anything about the contract–but it is the reasonable kind of speculation any person who wishes to think critically ought to do before running their mouths concerning shit they don’t know anything about.

    And if that makes me an asshole, then I don’t know what to say.

  • Pdq-lawns

    Its a shame how some people have so much time  to do nothing that they want to rule the world and be God
    You would think with all the hurricanes and tornadoes and floods and mass killings and wars and wars that most
     intelligent people would get the message by now . God is coming back to redeem his people.
     So whats wrong with someone Glorifying his holy name with a sign. Maybe some non believer will get saved by what she is doing.  I think she should keep her sign up and maybe some neighbors should support her.
      Remember you should love your neighbor as you love yourself