Efforts to Save Mount Soledad Memorial Face Hypocrisy

Here’s another fun article from our friends at Cybercast News Service. It’s entitled “Efforts to Save Mount Soledad Memorial Face Deadline.”

Mount Soledad Easter Cross

If you aren’t familiar with this matter, you can check out my last post. To quote CNS:

Activists trying to protect the Mount Soledad veterans’ memorial in San Diego, Calif., say the Fourth of July weekend would be the perfect time for President Bush to appeal to his conservative base by taking federal possession of the monument under eminent domain.

Whoa, Nellie! They want Bush to “appeal to his conservative base” by using eminent domain? Are these people stupid? Conservatives hate eminent domain! I know not all conservatives think alike (it just seems that way most of the time), but I bet that most fundies objected to last year’s Supreme Court decision that greatly expanded the government’s ability to seize property. (Note that outrage at this decision has cut across the political spectrum, but conservatives have published some of the most strident objections.)

So let me get this straight. Eminent domain is bad when people you don’t like do it to you, but eminent domain is good when you do it to people you don’t like? OK. It makes sense now!

The knuckle-draggers currently keeping this issue in the courts are at the Thomas More Law Center, a “public interest” law firm dedicated to, among numerous other regressive agendas, demolishing the wall of separation between church and state. They represent a group calling itself “San Diegans for the Mount Soledad National War Memorial.”

They are using a strategy that conservatives everywhere are brilliant at: Changing the debate by changing the name. What sort of communist could be opposed to a war memorial? I’ll bet the guy who filed this suit is an atheist!

The article continues:

The battle over the cross began in 1991 when Federal District Court Judge George Thompson ruled in favor of atheist Philip Paulson and ordered the city to remove the cross.

Hide the children! He is an atheist!!

The journalistic integrity continues:

The Mount Soledad cross was built in 1954 as a memorial to Korean War casualties and veterans.

Wrong!! See my last article. The current version was built in 1954 in honor of the resurrection fantasy. It has been known since the beginning as the Easter Cross. An earlier version was built in 1913. I know that the Korean War is still technically going on (it ended with a cease-fire, not a peace treaty), but I had no idea that we’ve been at war with North Korea for 93 years!

“They are prominent features atop hillsides in publicly-owned parks,” Linda Hills, executive director of the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties, told the San Diego Union Tribune in 1998. “Their Christian import is clear and has been acknowledged by the courts. Their maintenance by the City and County, respectively, is tantamount to a governmental endorsement of Christianity.

But [Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center] disagreed, saying that the cross has a meaning that transcends religion. “It would be a devastating tragedy that we would not recognize the sacrifice of these veterans and their families by honoring that with a cross, which is a universal symbol of sacrifice,” he said.

It’s not a “universal symbol of sacrifice”! It’s a universal symbol of Christianity! The cross doesn’t symbolize sacrifice to me. It symbolizes blind following, intolerance, hatred, theocracy, oppression and subjugation of women, and numerous other crimes against humanity. That’s the last thing I want my tax dollars supporting.

4 Responses to “Efforts to Save Mount Soledad Memorial Face Hypocrisy”

  1. Brian Says:

    I’m not old enough to have enjoyed Lenny Bruce when he was alive, but I am aware of his observation regarding the cross as the symbol of Christianity. He said, in essence, if Jesus had been killed today, Catholics would have to wear little electric chairs around their necks.

    To pretend that this symbol has any other meaning in our society beside the Christian connotation is absurd. I’m never surprised by the hypocrisy Christians routinely engage in when rallying to defend their precious delusion. These are, after all, the same people who became apoplectic upon learning that a fucking Teletubbie shared a triangle with the gay rights movement. Sorry, to me it’s just a geometric shape, but I understand how it can be used by a particular group in a symbolic function. As the triangle has other uses, one can claim a certain “universality” of the shape, albeit with a wide gamut of meanings – or no meaning at all.

    The same cannot be said of the cross, or the Star of David, or the Penthouse Bunny. Each denotes a specific domain in our culture, and anyone with a brain can see it. Sadly, that’s a party fundies will never be invited to.

  2. Brian Says:

    Sorry, Heff, I meant to say PLAYBOY bunny. As a boy growing up, my dad had a particular fondness for Penthouse, which limited my covert adolescent indulgences in porn to only one of many possible avenues. Hence, the Penthouse error. I profoundly apologize if any Playboy supporters are offended.

  3. Parrotlover77 Says:

    This is an oldy but goody. I had not read it until now!

    I never did understand the whole cross thing. I’ve heard followers refer to ornate depictions in art of the cross as “absolutely beautiful.” Really? One of the most horrendous implements of torture ever devised by the disgusting black depths of some twisted people’s hearts is… beautiful?

    Why not have the favorite christian symbol be the damn fish? At least it had a cute story associated with it (whether or not it’s true). Or how about a sheep (you know, born in a manger)? Or maybe the star of bethlehem? Those are all happy christ memories. Why choose his implement of torture? To signify his sacrifice, okay. But then when make it all ornate and shit instead of the disgusting vile device it actually is?

    Where’s my ornate electric chair necklace?

  4. The Reverend Says:

    “Thou shalt not make any graven image” doesn’t strictly mean “of people”. After all, the idolitors attacked by the bible were all about a golden calf. A cross is too a “graven image”.

    The fish logo used today by christians came about by two things.

    1. Egyptian children wore fish neclaces to prevent drowning. This is called sympathetic talismans.

    2. The fish emblem as depicted today is the YONI turned on its side. The Yoni is an icon representing a woman’s vagina and strongly connected to Goddess worship.

    Like everything else in christian magic, they stole the fish too.