I am against unnecessary and excessive impositions of religion in the public sphere (religion is something best left to the individual, as my thinking goes), but sometimes I really do not understand the motivations or the issues with those who fight to remove every vestige of religion from the public arena. This appears to be one of those cases:
A ballot measure to preserve the Mount Soledad cross on public land in La Jolla easily surpassed the two-thirds support it needed for approval Tuesday night. But the voters’ decision on Proposition A won’t be the final word. The controversy heads back to court next month.
Two court dates are scheduled in the next three weeks. A Superior Court judge will examine the ballot measure’s constitutionality Aug. 12, and a federal judge will hear cross-related arguments Aug. 15.
The proposition calls for the San Diego City Council to give the 29-foot cross, a concentric set of granite walls and the land around them to the U.S. Interior Department as a national veterans memorial.
Tuesday night, three dozen Proposition A backers at the Westgate Hotel greeted the early returns with cheers. Among them was Phil Thalheimer, chairman of a group called San Diegans for the Mount Soledad National War Memorial.
“Holy cow,” Thalheimer said, looking at absentee-voting results that showed three out of four voters backing Proposition A. “It is better than I expected.”
Attorney James McElroy, whose client filed a lawsuit challenging the presence of the cross on city land in 1989, called the vote meaningless.
“It still doesn’t mean a damn thing,” he said. “Voters should have never voted on it. It’s a waste of taxpayers’ money.”
The cross has been there since 1954. It is a War Memorial. It has a great deal of significance to a great deal of people, and I don’t understand why it would have to go. This isn’t a two-ton granite version of the Ten Commandments in a Court House. I don’t understand the big deal.
Plus, it is kind of pretty, as far as war memorials go:
Again, if there is some background to this story I am missing, some extenuating factors I am unaware of, fill me in. Because right now it really does look to me like this is nothing more than a bunch of secularists simply trying to force their way on a community that generally seems to hold the memorial in pretty high regard. And if that is the case, it just ain’t right.