Followers of Summum, a bizarre Ancient Egyptian-inspired New Age religion which is practised inside a pyramid, had demanded the right to erect a marker listing their guiding “Seven Aphorisms” in a public park in Pleasant Grove City.

The park already contains a stone inscribed with the Ten Commandments and the Summum followers wanted theirs to go next to it.

The tiny Salt Lake City-based sect had argued that a town that accepted one donated religious monument was constitutionally obliged to accept others.

The town had rejected Summum’s monument only for a federal appeals court in Denver to support the sect’s right to free speech.

The case hinged on whether a public park open to some donations must accept others and whether freedom of speech is guaranteed in such places.

The town, most of whose residents are Mormons, had said that public parks would become cluttered junkyards of monuments or else would have to remove long-standing ones.

Experts had said the case could have had repercussions across America, where many of the country’s most famous memorials were donated.

In an opinion for the court that included the lyrics of John Lennon, Justice Samuel Alito said a permanent monument was not the same as public speaking in a park.

Even long-winded speakers eventually conclude their remarks and people distributing leaflets at some point grow tired and go home, but monuments endure, he argued.

“It is hard to imagine how a public park could be opened up for the installation of permanent monuments by every person or group wishing to engage in that form of expression,” he wrote.

He said monuments often convey multiple messages, citing the mosaic of the word “imagine” that was donated to Central Park in New York in memory of John Lennon.

Summum’s lawyers said they would continue to argue that governments cannot favour one religion over another.

The religion won similar cases against two other Utah towns, which chose to take down their Christian monuments rather than have to put up a Summum one.

Summum believes that the Aphorisms were given to Moses by God along with the Commandments, but the prophet broke them on the grounds that mankind was not ready for them.

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