Deep in the Mojave National Preserve, 125 miles northeast of Los Angeles, an 8-foot-tall metal structure juts upward from a rocky outcrop. The structure is a Latin cross -- the preeminent symbol of Christianity -- that the National Park Service has boarded up with plywood pending a decision on its future by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The case, known as Salazar vs. Buono and slated to be taken up by the court on Wednesday, is the culmination of a nine-year legal battle over whether the cross is a religious symbol or a secular "commemoration" of soldiers who died in World War I. Like many legal cases, this one has grown more complicated over the years. At issue now is not whether a cross on property owned by the federal government represents improper government endorsement of religion, thus violating the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits governmental favoritism of any particular religion. Lower courts have already decided that it is a violation of the 1st Amendment, and the government did not ask the Supreme Court to review this decision.
What the justices will consider instead is whether that favoritism is meaningfully eradicated by the government's proposal to transfer ownership of the patch of land on which the cross stands to a local veterans group, even though the cross will remain designated a national memorial.
It's clear to me and many other former military officers that the proposal does not live up to the government's obligation not to favor any particular religion. The cross is unquestionably a sectarian religious symbol that, as a congressionally designated national memorial to veterans, would convey the message that the military values the sacrifices of Christian war dead over those of service members belonging to other faiths. This would be true even if the property were to be transferred to private owners.
Furthermore, such a memorial -- one of only 49 national memorials in the country -- would be harmful to the military as an institution. It would strike at the heart of what makes the military function, promoting social divisiveness while undermining unit cohesion and esprit de corps.
The U.S. military is a religiously diverse institution -- 11% of current active members of the military say they belong to a non-Christian faith, while 21% are atheists or report no religion. Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and Muslims serve in Afghanistan, Iraq and other theaters, and Jews and Muslims have fought in the U.S. military in every war, including the Revolutionary War.
