WHO'S BEING INTOLERANT?

San Diego Union Tribune ^ | 03-09-2005 | Matthew T. Hall

[R. Masters]

The Mount Soledad cross must go, the San Diego City Council said yesterday.

The 16-year saga of whether the cross would stay on public land in La Jolla came to an emotional conclusion last night as the council voted 5-3 to reject a last-ditch effort to keep it in place.

The vote capped a six-hour public hearing that attracted 350 people, most of them Christians who urged the council to donate the cross and surrounding land to the federal government so it possibly could remain where it has stood since 1954.

But the cross now must be moved to comply with an injunction forbidding its presence on public land. Federal Judge Gordon Thompson Jr. issued the injunction in 1991, when he ruled that the cross violated the state Constitution's guarantee of separation between church and state. Thompson had left it to the city and the lawyers in the case to resolve the matter.

In the latest court decision in the case, a panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2002 that the constitutional violation still existed when it struck down the city's second attempt to sell the land to a private buyer.

"This is definitely the first page of the final chapter, and I don't expect the final chapter to last another five years," lawyer James McElroy said last night. "I think we are at the end of the line here."

McElroy represents Philip Paulson, one of two atheists who filed the original lawsuit against the city in 1989.

He said attorneys for the city as well as the group that maintains the cross and Paulson will meet soon to finalize plans for when and where to move the cross, which stands 29 feet tall on top of a 5-foot-high base. McElroy said he would call the City Attorney's Office today, and that the cross could be moved within 90 days.

In all, two attempts by the city to sell the cross and the land around it have been ruled unconstitutional, and a third attempt to unload the property was defeated by voters in November when nearly 60 percent rejected authorizing a new sale.

When the City Council approved putting Proposition K on the ballot in July, it also voted to support moving the cross if the measure failed.

Councilman Scott Peters, whose district includes the cross, said he would uphold that.

"As a public official, I promised in December with my hand on the Bible, so help me God, to uphold the Constitution, and I can't ignore what the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is doing," Peters said.

SCOTT LINNETT / Union-Tribune The cross was dedicated as a war memorial on Easter in 1954.

Council members Michael Zucchet, Toni Atkins, Donna Frye and Ralph Inzunza supported Peters' call to reject giving the cross to the federal government.

Mayor Dick Murphy and Councilmen Brian Maienschein and Jim Madaffer disagreed, saying the council should try again to keep the cross in place. Councilman Tony Young was absent.

"This City Council needs to explore every opportunity," Murphy said. "It needs to exhaust every possible effort to preserve the cross on Mount Soledad."

Reps. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Escondido, and Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon, had added a provision to an omnibus spending bill signed by President Bush in December that named the Mount Soledad cross a national veterans memorial.

All the city had to do was donate the land to the National Park Service, Cunningham and Hunter said in a letter to the mayor yesterday.

The congressmen said they never sought a written legal opinion before inserting the language into the spending bill, but lawyers for the Thomas More Law Center, which fights for Christian ideals in court, said such a transfer would allow the cross to stay.

McElroy said yesterday that a donation wouldn't cure the constitutional violation. He pointed to a 2004 ruling from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in a case involving a cross on federal park land in the Mojave National Preserve.

He also said the council shouldn't wait for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on two cases concerning displays of the Ten Commandments that it heard testimony on last week.

"There are always going to be church-state issues before the Supreme Court," McElroy said.

Others suggested that the council should wait to see how those decisions might affect the Mount Soledad case.

The emotional hearing yesterday took place in Golden Hall, where the meeting was moved ahead of time to accommodate a crowd that was anticipated to be too big for the council's usual chambers in the City Administration Building.

More than 60 speakers, most of them Christians, urged the council to give the land to the federal government. About 15 others, mainly veterans, said the cross should move.

The Rev. Mark Slomka, senior pastor at Mount Soledad Presbyterian Church, which is near the cross, said his congregation wanted the council to consider the land transfer to the federal government.

Slomka has said his church would accept the cross on its property as a last resort, but he said yesterday that the offer was off the table if the council rejected the transfer.

James Hartline, a Christian activist from Hillcrest, added that a vote against giving the cross to the National Park Service would not be forgotten.

"We will either prevail before this City Council to maintain the cross in its current location, or we will prevail in the 2006 and 2008 elections," Hartline said. "It is not the jurisdiction of this City Council to negotiate away our religious freedoms. The Mount Soledad cross is non-negotiable."

William Kellogg, president of the Mount Soledad Memorial Association, which built and maintains the cross, said placing the group under the National Park Service would subject it to cumbersome levels of bureaucracy and jeopardize plans for a veterans memorial on the hill.

The association began building its memorial in 2000. It is a collection of walls and plaques intended to honor veterans of all wars, and Kellogg said fund raising and plaque purchases have suffered in recent years because of the uncertainty caused by the legal challenges to the cross.

"Moving the cross to private land will save the cross and will allow the association to become the owners of the land, and will allow the association to operate the memorial walls and honor veterans for posterity," Kellogg said.

[R. Masters]

This cross has been a San Diego landmark for years, standing high above our city. A few evil, intolerant people in the right places can do so much damage. God help us all.

[sageb1]

Yet another attempt to "free" citizens from religion and to force Christians into a closet. If I put on a tee shirt embroidered with the Ten Commandments and stood in the park, would I be forced to leave?

[franky]

There are only two avenues that will be traveled as the results of the flagrant attacks by Satan and those are a catastrophe somewhere in the U S or the Church goes underground.

[kevkrom]

So... when are the busybodies going to try and change the name of the city, since it is named for a Catholic saint?