Posted on 03/11/2005 11:30:33 PM PST by nickcarraway
For those of you who thought the day would never come in America when a Christian cross would be torn down from a veteran’s memorial, you’re in for a shock. On, March 8, 2005, the San Diego City Counsel voted 5 to 3 to tear down a 43 foot concrete cross from the Mt. Soledad Veteran’s Memorial in San Diego, California. This cross has stood since 1954 and was originally dedicated to veterans of the Korean War.
The Mt. Soledad cross is surrounded by over 1,600 granite plaques commemorating American veterans of all wars, and has served as a gathering place for hundreds of group and private veterans’ memorials and tributes. It also has served as a meeting place for annual Easter sunrise services. Thousands of Christian worshipers honor this monument as a great spiritual, historic and cultural treasure.
But, on March 8, after 15 years of litigation, brought by an atheist and supported by the ACLU, the City Council voted to strike a deal with the atheist, by removing the cross. The City did this in spite of a recent Congressional act signed by our President designating this site a National Memorial and offering to take possession of it. The City did this in spite of offers of free legal aid from two powerful national Christian law centers (the Thomas More Law Center and the Alliance Defense Fund.)
Perhaps even more tragically, the Mt. Soledad Memorial Association, made up of old veterans, buy led by a non-veteran bureaucrat, also endorsed the removal of the Christian Cross from their own memorial, citing pragmatic reasons, and citing their weariness from 15 years of lawsuits. They also did this in spite of the efforts of their Congressmen to make this a national monument, and in spite of offers of free legal assistance if they would continue to stand up to the atheists.
We all know that evil flourishes when good men do nothing; but what we didn’t know is how easy it would be for a few good men, and our elected officials in the City of San Diego to abandon their sense duty and decency. It was truly a dark day in this corner of America when a few good men stood and professed that was better to strike a deal with a religiously intolerant atheist, than to stand up and fight for their beliefs, or the beliefs of the vast majority of their constituents. What we never imagined, in our country, in our lifetimes, is that some intolerant hate-filled men would be able to hide behind our Constitution, and file enough frivolous lawsuits, to force a group of venerated American veterans into surrendering their principles and their integrity. When General Douglas MacArthur retired he spoke about a soldier’s code of duty, honor, and country, and then stated that “old soldiers never die, they just faded away.”
I’m sure General MacArthur never contemplated that in fading away, a group of old American veterans would abandon their code of duty, honor, and country, for a new code of “defeatism, pragmatism, and appeasement.” Those great men, honored by the Mt. Soledad cross, who paid the ultimate sacrifice, must be looking down on the Memorial Association that had promised to preserve this memorial with sorrow. The Marine motto is Semper Fidelis, or “always faithful”. At least for a few of these old Memorial Association veterans being “always faithful” really meant to only be faithful for 15 years, and then to surrender to legal pressures by an opposition becoming more dedicated to tearing down what we believe than protecting what they were entrusted to preserve.
We should all pray for those men who have forgotten their vows and their code and for those who have exchanged duty, dedication, and even their faith, for political expedience. We should all pray for the American country we now live in, where this cowardly, despicable act of religious intolerance and bigotry is sanctioned in one of our finest cities, and carried out against the most sacred symbol of our faith.
For those of you who want to do more than just pray, write to your Congressional representatives and to our President, beseeching them to act to undo this great injustice before it’s too late and before we insult more than just the hate-filled sensitivities of one atheist and the ACLU.
Mark A. Ginella is an attorney for Dr. John Steel and a former Navy fighter pilot during the Korean War.
The city of San Diego maintains it's track record of caving into athiest and anti-Christians.
Emergency injunction? Candlelight prayer vigils at the homes of the 5 who voted to destroy this landmark? What legal and civic pressures can be brought to bear on this travesty?
And to think that some people claim "right-wing conservatives" are the Taliban in the U.S.
Stupid leftist fundamentalist Taliban are as intolerant as their counterparts in Afghanistan.
Next thing someone will want to change the names of all of the cities named after saints........San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Fe, St. Paul, etc. etc. etc.
Note to self, don't give anyone anymore stupid ideas, they might just act on them.
For the rest of the story:
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San Diego council votes to move Mount Soledad cross
By Matthew T. Hall
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
10:51 p.m. March 8, 2005
The Mount Soledad cross must go, the San Diego City Council said Tuesday.
The 16-year saga of whether the cross would stay on public land in La Jolla came to an emotional conclusion Tuesday 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 will 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 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 legal 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 Tuesday 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, the group that maintains the cross and the atheist challenging its presence 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 addition to the city's two sales of the cross and the land around it that were ruled unconstitutional, 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.
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 in 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 Tuesday.
The congressmen never sought a written legal opinion before inserting the language in the spending bill, but lawyers for the Thomas More Law Center, which fights for Christian ideals in court, said the transfer would allow the cross to stay.
McElroy said Tuesday the donation wouldn't cure the constitutional violation. He pointed to a 2004 ruling from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on 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 took testimony on last week.
"There are always going to be church-state issues before the Supreme Court," McElroy said.
Others suggested the council should wait to see how those rulings might affect the Mount Soledad case.
The emotional hearing Tuesday took place in Golden Hall, where the meeting was moved ahead of time to accommodate a crowd that was expected 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 cross 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, 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 Tuesday said the offer was off the table if the council rejected the land 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 designed 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.
SAVE THE CROSS ACTION PROJECTS
EMAIL, FAX or PHONE Gov Arnold, and every Republican California legislator to contact the president asking Mr Bush to launch this initiative:
CALIFORNIA LEGISLATORS WEB SITE http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:jMbXBSy2Ie8J:www.standingupforcalifornia.com/action/contact-legislators.html
EMAIL, FAX or PHONE every Republican US Senator and Representative:
US GOV WEB SITE http://www.firstgov.gov/Contact.shtml
CONTACT AFFILIATED GROUPS AND INDIVIDUAL CHRISTIANS.
SAMPLE MESSAGE: The Antiquities Act authorizes the President to designate landmarks and structures as national monuments. President Bush must make the
Mount Soledad cross a national monument.
A 43-foot tall cross that was erected atop Mt. Soledad in San Diego, California 50 years ago to honor our nation’s veterans faces imminent removal unless we act now.
An ACLU-backed atheist has waged a 15-year court battle to force removal of the famous cross, and a federal court has ordered the city of San Diego to remove it. However, one option remains.
Federal law known as the Antiquities Act authorizes the President to designate landmarks and structures as national monuments and make the property on which the monument stands federal property. President Clinton used this law to establish numerous new national monuments during his term. In addition, the Historic Sites Act allows the Secretary of the Interior to designate certain sites national historic landmarks and bring them under the care of the National Park Service.
Just this month, on Veterans' Day, a new plaque was added to the Mt. Soledad Memorial to honor President Reagan, further strengthening its status as a monument worthy of national protection. Thus, it is fitting that the President formally designate Mt. Soledad as a national memorial park for veterans, and save it from destruction at the hands of the ACLU.
President Bush can save the historic cross from another ACLU-backed removal by designating Mt. Soledad a national monument for our veterans.
New plan, buy a big-ish hill next to a major highway or interstate, put the biggest cross in the western hemisphere on it, maybe even with other signs (give me ideas people), just to see what happens. It will be good family fun for all.
Liz, good work. We MUST stand up to the ACLU's continued extortion and religious blackmail!
It's an outrage that the ACLU's obsessive power-fixation on the First Amendment is being used as a destructive tool to eradicate Christian symbols---from the Ten Commandments to crosses, to prayers in public places....and so on, and so forth, ad infinitum, ad nauseaum.
You'd think the ACLU types would get professional treatment for their severe self-esteem problems, rather than incessantly beating up on innocent Christians.
Definitely yes, that too.....however, we should not let the hate-filled ACLU Secular Taliban run us off Mt Soledad.
Absolutely we should not let them, we should take it up a notch and fight for what we believe in, and make more of what we believe in.
All the freedoms we have were granted under the context of us being a moral society, executing murderers, free to dissent but not subvert. ACLU is a money-grubbing extortioner's ring and we must look beyond the case-by-case fury this should generate--to make sure we FORCE our legislators to close the LOOPHOLE in the Civil Rights laws under which they are getting MILLIONS for filing frivolous, truly wicked lawsuits. GRRRRRRRRRRR
In 1976, Congress passed the Civil Rights Attorneys Fee Awards Act, which was designed to encourage private lawyers to take on suits to protect civil and constitutional rights. The law provides that judges can order federal and state governments to pay legal fees to private lawyers who sued the government and won. The result has been a flood of civil rights cases in federal court. From The New American Feb. 2, 1987
It's an outrage that US law, passed during the Watergate era, allows the ACLU to collect attorney's fees for makework----Christian-hatng lawsuits it itself launches.
That means "values voters" have been footing the bill for the ACLU's launching a juggernaut to remove Ten Commandments images, Christmas creches and Christmas carols, taking God out of the Pledge of Allegiance, and because they claim they have a civil right not to see the Ten Commandments, a civil right not to hear the word “God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, not to see a creche of the Baby Jesus, not to hear Christmas carols. The ACLU has collected a huge amount of our tax dollars in this left-handed fundraiser for the ACLU.
FReepers can silence the ACLU with a bit of activism. We need to insist our Congressmen repeal this abusive law that allows the ACLU to get rich on harassing Christian America. Congress must repeal laws enabling the ACLU's Christian-hating activities. Cut off the ACLU's funds and watch them disappear. Here's what we can do.
Under the aegis of the ACLU's Foundation---worth some $135 million---any number of financial travesties can be hidden. The IRS should determine whether the ACLU is properly accounting for all its tax-funded activities, whether it is inflating legal costs, and whether it is using tax dollars for the purposes stated. We need to know whether the ACLU is engaged in Enron-style accounting and spending practices.
REFERENCE SOURCE FOR ARGUING REPEAL TO CONGRESS
Apparently, when Congress contemplated the fee-shifting bill three decades ago, it never conceived that 42 U.S.C. §1988 would be used to secure fees in esoteric battles over the meaning of the establishment clause of the First Amendment.
The statute gives a court "discretion" to award attorneys' fees to the prevailing party in civil rights cases.
Study of the legislative history of the statute reveals that Congress intended this statute to apply to civil rights abuses, including certain race and sex discrimination cases, but not to arguments about whether Judge Roy Moore is allowed to display the Ten Commandments in the Alabama courthouse.
During the deliberations on the bill, the Senate penned that "in many cases arising under our civil rights laws, the citizen who must sue to enforce the law has little or no money with which to hire a lawyer."[6] In the recent First Amendment lawsuits filed by the ACLU, the tables are turned.
Small school districts and municipalities can either defend lawsuits and risk paying the ACLU's attorneys' fees if they lose, or they can voluntarily submit to the ACLU's view of the Constitution.
Even if lawsuits over the establishment clause somehow fall within 42 U.S.C. §1988, the statute empowers courts with nothing more than "discretion" to award fees.
In these cases, one would expect courts to withhold awarding fees. Since this is not happening, Congress must take immediate action to clarify 42 U.S.C. §1988 to explicitly exclude lawsuits related to the acknowledgement of God.
Wonder if any counter proposals to the City of SanDiego that
demand the City change it's name so as to nolonger offend the godless infidels who HATE America would have any affect.
If they will not surrender the Memorial to the Nation-and
insist on tearing down the cross --then they ought go full measure and change the name of that godless city so as to no longer offend the Anti-American ACLU and that vomit son
of Satan.
What would they rename it? Here is a suggestion, how about Stalin Diego, or Diegograd, or Novy Lenin. Didn't communist Russia take down crosses from the Eastern Orthodox churches after the revolution?
I think they would accept your suggestions. They are better
than my own. But if every community that has turned from the God of our Founding fathers were named Sodom or Gomorrah
to reflect the source of their sustanance it would confuse
the quasi Governemntal USPS more than it already gets.
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