A government may not prohibit religious exercise (or speech, or assembly, etc) simply because other people want to damage that exercise.
Why would having a local government require that all new buildings near a historical site have a cross on top as a memorial to the 3000 people who died there violate the constitution?
Are you one of those people who insist that cities purge themselves of any reference to our Christian heritage? Are you opposed to Cities acknowledging our christian heritage by erecting crosses as memorials as opposed to monoliths or pentagrams?
If so, then maybe you are the one that is not a defender of the constitution.
There is a huge difference between insisting that "cities purge themselves of any reference to our Christian heritage" and cities requiring the use of religious symbols on any new (private) construction. Would your proposed law require a new synagogue to include a 40-foot cross?
Where in the constitution does it prohibit a city from requiring certain decorative items to be placed on new buildings as a condition of obtaining a building permit? And where in the constitution does it prohibit the city from directing what kind of decoration is to be placed there? And where in the constitution does it prohibit a city from requiring that that decorative addition be a monument to people who died in the vicinity? And where in the constitution does it prohibit a city from using a decorative item that is traditionally associated with death and the honoring of the dead (i.e. a cross)?
The government (Federal, under the first amendment, and state/local under the 14th) may not require the exercise of religion - including the use of particular religious imagery - as a condition of issuing a license, including a building permit. I don't believe that the Constitution prohibits a city from using a cross as a memorial, but I do believe that a city may not require private citizens to use a cross as a memorial. Again, it goes back to the synagogue situation - why should those who don't believe that the cross holds any sort of significance be forced to use that symbol (rather than, say, a star of david)?
I suspect that your vision of the constitution is one that was not common in America at the time of its founding or even at the time the 14th Amendment was passed. Indeed your view of the Constitution appears to be fluid and adjustable with the times; i.e., the idea of a "Living Document" Constitution.
If you can point me to a single law that required the use of religious imagery, then, by all means, let's see it.
Really?
Gee, here is the text of the 14th amendment.
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
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Please point out the clause or section of that amendment that says that a city can't require that a building in a historical district of a city must have a designated symbol commemorating and honoring the deaths of 3000 people on the top of their new building as a condition to getting a building permit.
I don't see it there. I suspect it must be somewhere in the pneumbras (the empty space between the lines).
Tell me does the Constitution also guarantee a woman the right to kill her unborn baby? Is that in that amendment somewhere?