Salt Lake Street Fight (washingtonpost.com)

"This is the most divisive period anybody in our city can remember," said Mayor Ross C. Anderson, a Democrat universally known as "Rocky." "All of a sudden, the ill feeling that has been under the surface for years has boiled way over the top with this argument."

The argument is centered downtown on Main Street -- or, more precisely, a corridor that used to be Main Street until 1999. That's when the city sold a long block of the central thoroughfare to the church.

The church closed off traffic on the once-busy block, piped in music by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and installed placid gardens where visitors can gaze up 210 feet to the heroic statue of the angel Moroni (the son of the prophet Mormon) blowing a golden horn atop the highest granite spire of the Mormon Temple.

The church fathers also closed off freedom of speech -- on a street that had been a key public forum for Salt Lakers of every party and creed.

"You gave away part of Main Street!" civic activist Samantha Francis complained to the City Council at a noisy, emotional public hearing last week."And you gave away our constitutional rights with it! No other city could possibly do that."

As a legal matter, this city couldn't do it, either, the federal courts have ruled. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit said in October that the city had the right to convey public land to the church but could not permit the new owner to limit First Amendment rights on a block that remained a public passage.

The church wants the city to give up its "easement" allowing public access to the plaza. The theory is that elimination of any public involvement would make the block a completely private area, and thus vitiate assertions of free speech.