Posted on 05/21/2005 9:58:14 PM PDT by BigFinn
The San Diego City Council voted this week to allow voters to decide the fate of the historic Mt. Soledad Cross overlooking the Pacific Ocean in La Jolla.
The vote represented the newest chapter in a long line of legal battles to remove the cross, led by ACLU attorney James McElroy, who represents an atheist seeking to remove the Christian symbol from public lands.
The legal battles date back to 1989.
Essentially, the voters will decide whether they want to transfer the property to the National Park System as a war memorial.
For more than 50 years, the site has been recognized by the public as a place where war veterans are honored for their service to the United States.
The Mt. Soledad Association manages the site where plaques recognize war veterans who served in the last century. Most of the veterans recognized are from the greater San Diego area.
Last November, two Republican congressmen from San Diego County, Rep. Duncan Hunter and Rep. Randy Cunningham, added a provision to an appropriations bill to allow the city to designate the site as a national war memorial.
If the citizens of San Diego agree with this proposal, the site will be maintained by the National Park System. The bill was signed into law by President Bush in December.
Representatives from the Mt. Soledad Association and the park system were in Washington last week to discuss a working plan to manage the site.
Opponents of the transfer, including the ACLU, contend it is illegal and unconstitutional. However, a lawyer for the Thomas More Center, Charles LiMandri, contends there is legal precedent for protecting religious symbols that already are on federal land.
While the debate on religious symbols on public land slowly is working its way through the courts, the proposition to transfer city property to the federal government will be decided by San Diego voters July 26.
San Diego Mayor Dick Murphy, who is leaving office in July, says "it may provoke additional litigation, but some things are worth fighting for."
Murphy was a supporter of a referendum that forced the city council to revisit the issue. The referendum sparked a record 89,000 petitions to request that the cross not be dismantled from its present site.
The initiative rescinded an earlier vote by the council that would have removed it.
The referendum, put together in just a month, was widely supported by San Diego radio talk-show hosts Roger Hedgecock, Rick Roberts and Mark Larson and Los Angeles host Paul McGuire.
Slightly more than 33,000 verified signatures were required for the referendum to be successful, based on a registered voter base of approximately 650,000 voters.
"Okay, but if it were practical, don't you think those cities and towns should change their names?"
I think you are right, we gotta do away with all of this religious crap. All cities whose name start with Saint, Santa, Santo, San, Sante, Sainte must change their names. All cities wherein all or part of the name are mentioned in the Bible or are names of religious fugures must be changed. The state of Maryland must remove "Mary" from its name and must heretofore be call "Land". (Damn those Catholics for starting a state!) All street names that have any form of "saint" in the name must be changed. And the abbreviation for street - "st." must stop being used because it might confuse and offend someone, (probably, only morons would be offended...but what the heck, we gotta protect them, too). And what about those f***ing churches and synagogues that you can see while driving down a PUBLIC street...we gotta build walls around them...sh*t!, we might as well build domes over them so they can't be seen from the air. And NO, you can't put a cross or star of David on to of the dome! What the hell are you thinking....oops, I forgot, "hell" is a religious concept so we can't use that word either ....and we can't use the word "devil" either....and all schools that use "devil" as all or part of their mascot name must change it to some inanimate, natural, nonreligious object such as a grain if sand or clod of dirt. Oh yea, people who have names of religious origin will have to change them officially on the government records and you will not be allowed to use the religious name in public. Well sh**, almost all names are religious in origin so I guess we'll have to start numbering people! Damn it, I forgot, numbers have religious origins and meaning, too. So we'll just have to give everyone a symbol, like "the artist formerly known as Prince"....and no religious symbols!!! No moons or stars....as a matter of fact, we need to make it illegal to look up at the moon and stars until we can figure out a way to encapsulate the earth to block the view.
Okay, now we gotta take care of that damned calendar. All of those day names and months that are related to gods and religion (Sorry, Woden, Thor, Frig and Saturn...you're history...except we can't mention you in history because mentioning religion is wrong.) And what about the Gregorian calendar, we gotta come up with a new calendar and system of time. Maybe we should just do away with time altogether....time tramples on peoples rights to spend time (there's that "time" thing that keeps offending me) thinking about new ways to be offended.
Sheesh, it looks like we are going to have to go back to living in caves......and no drawing religious figures on the cave walls!
One of the lawyers on this forum stated that doing so would make it difficult for people to fight civil rights cases. She then immediately invalidated her point by stating that she had litigated such cases herself, thereby identifying herself as one of the taxpayer looters.
Yeah, whatever jack.
It goesd counter to your claim, so you dismiss it.
*chuckle*
How convenient of you, and dishonest.
Irrelevant?
Your claimwas that they avoided mentioning God.
The claim is false, and is shown by the documents themselves, esspecially in the way the DATE is stated.
"In the year of our LORD".
Go pander your lies elsewhere.
I did, you said it's irrelevant.
Ever hear of The Church of England?
That is an 'established religion' by the government.
That is what the 'no establishment o freligion' is meant to avoid.
The founders often spoke of God.
George Washington had a church built near my area in New Windsor, and he officiated services there at the end of the war.
Evidently, you do not know your history.
I can back up my argument, you haven't been successful in presenting one based on fact.
"The welfare state, the socialized medicine, the way people here think they're entitled to everything from free medication to publicly-funded mortgages to a free university education. It makes me sick."
Do the citizens give a large portion of their income up for taxes?
""Yes and no. This country has a lot of religious symbols on public property, but it also has an official state religion whereas the United States cannot have one."
What is the official religion there? How is it deemed official?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.