Don't Get Cross With Me

The Washington Post reports today that the Supreme Court has reversed an earlier decision by the Ninth Circuit which banned the display of a cross on federal lands in the Mohave Desert.  As the Post reported at the time of the earlier ruling, the Ninth Circuit had held that any effort to remedy the situation by the government would effectively constitute an endorsement of religion.

Congress declared the site a national memorial, and proposed to cure any constitutional problems by transferring one acre on which the cross stands to the VFW in exchange for five acres owned elsewhere in the preserve by the Sandozes.

But Buono and the ACLU went to court again, and the courts agreed that such a plan would not resolve the constitutionality question. The deal "would leave a little donut hole of land with a cross in the midst of a vast federal preserve," the appeals court said.

The picture above shows the state funeral of Ronald Reagan which was held at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul in Washington, D.C., which is also known as the National Cathedral.  By the logic of the Ninth Circuit and the liberal dissenters led by Justice Stevens, this funeral should have never taken place.  As the Washingtonian Magazine reported on the cathedral's 100th anniversary:

...In 1893, largely as a result of efforts by civic leaders such as Riggs Bank president Charles Glover, Congress granted a charter to the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation to establish a cathedral "for the promotion of religion and education and charity." President Benjamin Harrison signed the charter into law.

...The first activity on the new land was the raising of a Peace Cross to mark the end of the Spanish-American War. The cross stands south-southwest of the cathedral, across from St. Alban’s parish church.

Fortunately for us, the ACLU was not around when the National Cathedral was being planned.  The cathedral is visible for miles around in the D.C. area and, to quote Steven's dissent, stands as a "continued endorsement of a starkly sectarian message."  After all, it is clearly a Christian church right in the middle of our nation's capital!

However, if you look closely at the picture, you can see that several Muslim heads of state were in attendance at the funeral, wearing their distinctive kūfiyyāt.  Ironically, the Muslims pictured are more tolerant of a Christian funeral ceremony held in an Episcopal church than the only Protestant on the Supreme Court.

Share