Mount Soledad Decision Underscores Threat to U.S. War Memorials

• By Alan Sears
• Posted Jan 11, 2011
• No Comments »

Paul warned the Christians of Corinth that the cross would always be “a stumbling block” and “foolishness” (1 Corinthians 1:22) to the people around them.  He told the Philippians that there were many who act as “enemies of the cross of Christ (Philippians 3:18).”

That opposition took a significant new legal hold in a ruling issued January 4^th by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.  The court ruled 3-0 that the memorial cross that has stood at Mount Soledad since 1954 violates the U.S. Constitution.

“It’s tragic that the court chose a twisted and tired interpretation of the First Amendment over the common sense idea that the families of fallen American troops should be allowed to honor these heroes as they choose,” says Alliance Defense Fund Senior Counsel Joseph Infranco. “No one is harmed, constitutionally or otherwise, by the presence of a cross on a war memorial.  There is great harm to tearing these memorials down.  The memorial cross should stand in honor of the sacrifice made by American troops.”

“War heroes have earned the right to be remembered.  The memory of those who sacrificed their lives for our freedom shouldn’t be dishonored because the ACLU finds a small number of people who merely claim to be offended.

Memorial crosses of one kind or another have stood on Mount Soledad since 1913.  In 2005, 76 percent of San Diegans voted to preserve the current cross by transferring the memorial from city property to the ownership of the National Park Service, but that move was contested in court.  In 2006 — after years of litigation and faced with a court-ordered deadline to remove it — the land on which the memorial sits was taken by an act of Congress, passed with an 80-percent margin in the House and unanimous support in the Senate.  As a result of Congress’ action, the land was designated as a Federal Memorial and transferred to the U.S. Department of Defense.  Those developments set off the lawsuit that the 9th Circuit ruled on last week.

Last year, in the similar case of the Mojave Cross, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a land transfer initiated by Congress that passed the land under the monument back into the hands of a private veterans’ group was not unconstitutional.  What’s more, the high court declared that any religious significance associated with the cross does not render it constitutionally ‘off limits’ as a public memorial.

That ruling would seem to have implications for the Mount Soledad case, since, in the words of one San Diego newspaper, this latest case “raises the issue of whether a Latin cross is a religious symbol only for Christians, or a secular one when in the context of a war memorial” and whether “such a symbol should be allowed on land owned by the government.”

ADF is committed to the defense of our nation’s religious memorials, and to the religious liberty of our nation’s veterans – and of those who made the supreme sacrifice for their country.  Please be in prayer for our continuing efforts, and for the judges who are making such fateful decisions with regard to the future of our religious freedoms.