Well, imagine that. After 17 years of legal fighting and losing, religious conservatives and their vassals within the US Congress finally “won”. President Bush signed a law that allows the Federal government to acquire the Mt. Soledad cross.
I suspected that they might finally pull one out of their ass but I wasn’t surprised when the law was approved in the Senate and went to Bush for his scribble. Come on, it is an election year and the GOP is real danger of being thrown out of the majority in Congress. Members of Congress can now go around and tell their “constituents” that they “saved” the cross.
I’m sure it will look real good on the postage free mailings they will send out. Good for them.
It really isn’t any different than when the GOP went ape over President Clinton “protecting” 1.7 million acres of land in Utah back in 1996. They claimed he did it for politics not the environment. See this article: Federal land grab called ‘political’
It is just more proof that the GOP lies when they claim they are for less government. They are for less government unless it is to protect the special status of a particular religious sect.
I am reminded of an article I posted last year that likened this need for religious symbols on public property as a show of power to the non-believer or anyone not of the same faith. I quoted Marvin E. Frankel, a retired U S Federal District Court judge, and do so again here:
The symbols make a statement-not of religious faith. They are not needed for that. They assert simply and starkly, as I’ve said, POWER OVER the nonbelievers…. In the course of that proceeding, one of the sponsors of the creche was asked about his interest in viewing it while it stood on Scarsdale’s Boniface Circle during the Christmas season. To my surprise as the questioner, it turned out that he never bothered to go look at the creche at all, let alone to admire or draw inspiration from it. But on reflection that should not have been so surprising. The creche was not there for him to see or appreciate for its intrinsic spiritual value in his religious universe. It was there for others, who professed other religions or none, so that the clout of his religious group should be made manifest-above all to any in the sharply divided village who would have preferred that it not be there: This is the low road., followed by at least a good number of those who seek for. their religion and its symbols the imprimatur of government. If it is religious at all, this stance betokens a weak and self-doubting species of faith.
Faith and Freedom, Religiosity in America (quote can be found here: http://candst.tripod.com/leland10.htm)
The only thing that is keeping me from putting my head in an oven is knowing that lawyer for the plaintiff in the cross case, Jim McElroy, said they would file suit in Federal court to block the new law.
Tags: atheist, California, church and state, Mount Soledad, religion, religious freedomBut the legal fight that began in 1989 when an atheist veteran sued San Diego over the cross is not over. Philip Paulson’s attorney, Jim McElroy, said he filed papers in federal court in San Diego last week to void the transfer and declare it unconstitutional.
“I don’t think anybody really thinks the cross is going to remain on Mount Soledad. It’s been 17 years of litigation, and every court, every judge who’s ever looked at it has ruled it’s unconstitutional,” McElroy said.
