Here is a description of the seal of Los Angeles County, before the Board of Supervisors approved an official redesign to avoid an ACLU lawsuit. See if anything offends you.
There are six small panels, three going up and down on each side of the seal's central figure.
Top left: engineering instruments.
Middle left: a Spanish galleon.
Bottom left: a tuna representing the fishing industry.
Top right: oil derricks.
Middle right: the Hollywood Bowl, along with two stars representing the movie industry and one small cross
Bottom right: a prize cow.
The central figure, the largest object on the seal: Pomona, the Roman goddess of gardens and fruit trees.
Anything disturb you enough to demand that the seal be redesigned?
Probably not. For the overwhelming majority of millions of Los Angeles County residents over the last 50 years, this seal aroused no opposition.
But a few months ago someone with a magnifying glass at the American Civil Liberties Union saw that the smallest item on the seal was a cross. And in its aim to expunge any trace of Christianity and God from American public life, the ACLU brought this fact to the attention of the five Los Angeles County supervisors. Three were equally horrified and voted within days to erase the cross and redesign the seal, which now depicts a building with no Christian symbol in place of the cross.
When I learned of the impending vote of the supervisors, I asked Los Angeles listeners of my syndicated radio show to join me in a protest at this rewriting of Los Angeles County history. Which is what it was -- in the official words of the county, the cross represented "the influence of the church and the missions of California." Los Angeles was founded by Catholics who also gave the county its Christian name.
About 2,000 people showed up on a workday morning, many of them non-Christians, including atheists, Buddhists and a fair number of Jews (non-Orthodox and Orthodox). It was probably the first time in history that Jews have banded to protect the Christian cross. It is an achievement of which the ACLU should be proud. Its devotion to secularizing what has always been a Judeo-Christian society is helping unite Judeo and Christian as nothing before.
