It can stay, for now
It has been almost 20 years of legal battles over whether the Mount Soledad cross violates separation of church and state and a recent ruling by a federal judge says it can stay. But there will most likely be an appeal. Click here to see a view from the bottom of the hill.
posted by at Sunday, August 10, 2008
3 Comments:
I have lived in San Diego for about forty eight years; in the first several decades the top of "Mt.Soledad" was a Friday & Saturday night make out spot; and a city provided Easter Service facility. The early versions of the cross were placed to emphasise the Christian community, along with deed restrictions prohibiting any land sale to non Christians, i.e. Arabs or Jews. When developing the U.C.S.D campus, the city found it difficult to get good professors to live under those deed restrictions; after a few lawsuits the deeds in La Jolla were rewritten en mass.
A short while later complaints were filed about the cross; the retiring city attorney said the cross might be acceptable in a war memorial (the mayor at the time was a retired Catholic school-teacher) and the next weekend the POW-MIA folks were marching around the hilltop, to impress the news reporters.The next city attorney, (a practicing preacher, who apparently did not know the application of the term recuse) found various ways to delay and obfuscate, including false leases and ballot propositions. In the mean time the City developed a park area of eight or ten acres, with new street, sidewalks, sprinkler systems etc., never budgeted, just 'park maintenance'. Excuse me, but when the City spends millions on an Easter Sunday facility. that is 'establishment', and un Constitutional. The Christians have found it convenient to lie constantly about what has really been happening in San Diego. They have found a rich man who swings a lot of influence in La Jolla Shores. (who could have built a war memorial near the beach at any time in the last fifty years) to come up the hill and put up memorial plaques, so there is a war memorial now. AND, the Congressman of a nearby district threw a rider on a passing [military appropriations?] bill in the middle of the night to nationalise the fifteen square feet under the cross, as a national park. The first or second paragraph of the Constitution says"Congress shall make no Ex Post Facto law"; and that is exactly what this is, a law placed at the personal request of a member to invalidate a pending court case. ¿What is the standing of a law that has never been debated in Congress??
Many of us have ancestors that left Europe because of the Inquisition. As long as that Cross stands on a hilltop in San Diego, we all will know the people of San Diego hold no respect for the Constitution.
RICHARD(SAN)
Hi Richard, Thank you for taking the time to post this. The background information that you gave is not always provided in news stories about this case and I find it very interesting and helpful.
I agree with Richard's sentiments. In addition, I have to say that aesthetically the "monument" is an atrocity. Just a pile of cinder blocks! If somebody wants a war monument on Mount Soledad, design something with a little artistic merit, please!
gayle
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