Task Force votes to send letters to Mayor Parris and Councilwoman Marquez
From the Antelope Valley Press, Tuesday, February 9, 2010:
By Charles F. Bostwick and Dennis Anderson
Valley Press Editors
LANCASTER – The Antelope Valley Human Relations Commission voted unanimously Monday night to send strong letters of condemnation to Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris and Councilwoman Sherry Marquez over their recent comments about the Christian and Muslim religions.
The vote followed a three-hour meeting attended by nearly 100 people of whom about 40 were regular members of the task force, formed in 1996 by the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale following a rash of racially-motivated assaults.
By the meeting’s start, most of the members of the commission had heart that Parris twho hours earlier had issued an apology that some, if not all,accepted as basically sincere. That was not the case for the terse two-word apology uttered by Marquez at a hastily called City Hall press conference.
At the meeting were Christians such as Bishop Henry Hearns, pastor of Living Stone Cathedral of Worship in Littlerock as well as Parris’s predecessor as Lancaster mayor; at least 20 members of the Antelope Valley Muslim community; at least a half-dozen supporters of Marquez from Lancaster Baptist Church, which she attends; Unitarian-Universalists; Wiccans; members of the organized gay community; Buddhists, and Jewish and Orthodox Jewish representatives. Also in attendance were Lancaster mayoral and city council candidates, and Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford.
“I accept the mayor’s apology. I do not accept her apology,” said Kamal Al-Khativ, exectuive director of the American Islamic Institute of the Antelope Valley in Palmdale. “I am disappointed with both individuals.”
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