OPINION:
It is understandable that Californians would like to have Ronald Reagan’s statue in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall (“Out with the old,” Culture, May 15) but it is outrageous that it will replace the statue of Civil War hero Thomas Starr King instead of the one of the missionary Miguel Junipero Serra.
After all, Junipero Serra died three years before the Constitution was written and 64 years before California became part of the United States. Moreover, he was a loyal Spanish colonizer. He built a chain of missions in what later would become California - missions that exploited the labor of American Indians.
EDD DOERR
President
Americans for Religious Liberty
Silver Spring
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