Crosses

A long-running dispute over a cross in the Mojave National Preserve in Southern California may give the Supreme Court a chance to shift the law on church-state separation. Bush administration lawyers urged the justices last week to take up the case and to reverse a series of rulings that would "require the government to tear down a cross that has stood without incident for 70 years as a memorial to fallen service members." The appeal may be well timed.

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that L.A. County officials did not violate the establishment clause of the Constitution when they removed a cross from the county seal in 2004. The ACLU contended that a cross represented an endorsement of religion and thus violated the Constitution. After officials moved to remove the cross, a county employee sued, contending that the action indicated hostility toward Christians. A lower court dismissed the suit, and on Tuesday the U.S.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to take up the case seeking to force Los Angeles County to restore a cross to its seal, thus ending a three-year battle by some Christian activists. County public works employee Ernesto R. Vasquez filed suit in 2004, contending that a decision by the Board of Supervisors to excise the cross from its nearly 50-year-old seal was an act of hostility toward religion. As is its custom, the court gave no reason for its refusal to take the case.

Crosses in hand, the protesters gathered in the predawn gloom along the Mendocino coastline, two dozen rural Californians sickened by the mounting body count of war. Under a cold November rain, they busily pounded 2,035 foot-tall redwood symbols into the soggy ground along both sides of Highway 1 -- one for each U.S. serviceman and woman who had been killed in Iraq as of that date. Said resident Beth Bosk: "The sea of crosses shows just how crowded the cemetery is getting."

A federal judge Wednesday ordered the city to remove the landmark cross atop Mt. Soledad within 90 days, but Mayor Jerry Sanders said he will ask the City Council to appeal. U.S. District Court Judge Gordon Thompson ordered the 43-foot-tall cross removed because it violates a ban on religious symbols on public land. The city has fought a 17-year court battle against a San Diego atheist who objects to the cross.

In what could be the last chance to keep the cross atop Mt. Soledad from being removed, Mayor Jerry Sanders and Rep. Duncan Hunter on Thursday pleaded with President Bush to turn the site into a federal war memorial. After a 17-year court battle, a federal judge on May 3 ordered the city to take down the cross by early August or face a $5,000-a-day fine.

The City Council voted 5 to 3 Tuesday to continue a 17-year legal fight to keep a 43-foot-tall Christian cross on Mt. Soledad. At the request of Mayor Jerry Sanders, the council voted to appeal a federal judge's order that the cross be removed by early August because it violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday rejected a request by the city of San Diego to delay an Aug. 2 deadline set by a federal judge to have the cross atop Mt. Soledad removed. The judge has said that unless the cross comes down, the city faces a fine of $5,000 a day. Mayor Jerry Sanders said that he was disappointed and would continue to fight to save the cross, including a second appeal to the White House to declare the cross part of the national park system.

Thick streams of light in the shape of a cross burst from the tower at the front of Pepperdine University -- at least they do on the college's seal splashed across sweaters, mugs and T-shirts. In reality, nobody has dared to flip the switch that lights a 25-foot-tall cross set into the tower's walls. And whether to finally give it light after 33 years of darkness has become the center of a philosophical debate on the Christian campus just west of Malibu.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday gave the city a reprieve from an order by a federal judge to remove the cross atop Mt. Soledad by Aug. 2 or face $5,000 a day in fines. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy ordered a delay until he or the entire court issues a further order. He did not indicate how long that might take or what kind of order might be issued.