I am an avid (although not fanatical) Geocacher. Not only do I hunt for caches but I return to the geocaching community by placing about 5% of the total of my finds. Today I have 23 active caches and two that have been archived. The other day (Memorial Day) I placed three and the Saturday before that I placed one. I have not placed all that many lately, but I am getting back into the groove.
All of the ones I placed were approved and published without incident except one. This particular cache I called "Strong Tower" after a pretty cool Christian Rock band that I am a fan of. After all the other caches had been approved and published I wondered why this one had not. Then last night about 8:00 PM or so I get an e-mail from the approver who told me that he could not allow this one to be published because putting the lyrics to a Christian song on the cache page was promoting an agenda.
I was pretty ticked but I remembered that I am a Christian and I will turn the other cheek. While I did not compromise my faith, I edited the cache listing and removed the lyrics. I did not however, change the name of the cache. It was published a couple of hours later.
This may seem trivial to those of you who are unchurched, but for a Christian, it is like taking away the right to free speach. No where on the cache page was I telling anyone to convert, I was just stating my faith. It would be no different than someone making a cache dedicated to a sports team...which I am sure has been done.
My wife told me I should contest it but I believe in picking my battles wisely. I can still remain true to my faith and geocache...I will just have to be a bit more careful.
It is a sad day when a person cannot celebrate his faith while participating in a fun hobby like geocaching.
3 comments:
Bear in mind that geocaching.com is a private, not government entity, and as "free speech" has no First Amendment protection there.
Some may view putting such lyrics on a geocache's listing as prostelytizing especially if the lyrics aren't pertinent to the cache itself, and want to keep the whole site/area free of such activity, regardless of the religion. As long as the policy is being applied evenly by those who approve caches for your area, I don't really see a problem with it.
An additional note. Checking the rules for placing a cache (http://www.geocaching.com/about/guidelines.aspx#solicit), they explicitly state:
"For example, caches perceived to be posted for religious, political, charitable or social agendas are not permitted."
Unless the lyrics you posted were very pertinent to the cache itself, and the cache was not religion-oriented, I think you broke the rules there.
It's not an attack on your faith - it's an attempt to keep geocaching from becoming overrun with prostelytizers of all faiths.
Dakboy, trust me that this is an attack on the Christian faith. There are caches on paganism and Buddhism that get published. Log on to geocaching.com and look at the listing. THE ONLY thing I did to get it published was to remove the lyrics from the cache page. FWIW, people put song lyrics on geocaches all the time and they get published. I am not the first Christian cacher to notice this. Even the unchurched cachers who knew about this were a little taken back at the double standard in place.
Oh, I did not have an agenda. I just mentioned the song came into my head as I stopped there to take a drink after doing some biking.
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