Mt. Soledad Cross to Stay, Says Judge.
The contested 43-foot cross will stay atop Mt. Soledad in San Diego despite a efforts to have it removed.
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“The court finds the memorial at Mt. Soledad, including its Latin cross, communicates the primarily nonreligious messages of military service, death and sacrifice,” wrote U.S. District Judge Larry Alan Burns in his decision filed Tuesday. “As such, despite its location on public land, the memorial is constitutional.”
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“If you want to put a cross on your front lawn . . . we will be the first to defend you,” said David Blair-Loy, legal director of the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties. “When the government is sponsoring and endorsing the preeminent symbol of one religion, that’s when we have a problem.”
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The cross is also displayed “along with numerous purely secular symbols in an overall context that reinforces its secular message,” the judge said.Although walls with other religious symbols, such as the Star of David, have been added to the Mt. Soledad display, they are dwarfed by the large cross, Blair-Loy said. “It is a 43-foot cross on one of the highest points in San Diego,” he said. “If the cross is not a religious symbol, I don’t know what is.”
Why is it so many people attempt to claim giant Christian crosses and even Nativity creches are secular symbols? Furthermore, where does the judge get the idea that because the cross is displayed with secular symbols it “reinforces” it’s secular nature? If I put up a Star of David, a pentacle and a Crescent Moon, then surrounded them with myriad secular items would that make them all suddenly secular? If someone, such as PZ Meyers, were to take one and hold it hostage or desecrate it, I doubt people would be calling it a secular symbol then.
But of course it’s only a secular symbol when it suits the needs of people who want to skirt the law.
