San Diego Residents Vote to Protect Cross 7/31/2005
By Emma Elliott
One atheist battles the will of the majority.
Residents of San Diego voted overwhelmingly this week to support a war memorial featuring a cross, defying an atheist’s efforts. The measure passed with 76 percent of the vote.
The result elated Penny Harrington, Concerned Women for America (CWA) of California legislative liaison for San Diego and Imperial Counties.
“We are gratified that not only was that initiative effort successful in placing this important San Diego issue before the voters, but that voters supported the cross on Tuesday,” she said.
The 43-foot concrete cross on Mt. Soledad was erected in 1954. An atheist filed a lawsuit 35 years later, in 1989, claiming he was “offended” and that the cross’s presence on public land violated the U.S. and California Constitutions.
The city of San Diego has made three attempts to sell the land on which the cross is located to the Mount Soledad Memorial Association, the group that built and maintains it. The courts struck down the first two sales and San Diego voters rejected the third.
Last year President Bush signed H.R. 4818, a spending bill that includes a provision to allow the federal government to take over the memorial if the city of San Diego donated the land.
This led to a petition drive to allow the voters of San Diego to decide whether or not to donate the land. CWA of California sent out an action alert encouraging members in San Diego to sign. Officials validated 73,000 signatures. Only 33,000 were needed to place the measure on the ballot, thus making it the most successful petition drive in San Diego’s history.
A week before the vote, a judge ruled that a simple majority would be insufficient to pass the measure. The city charter requires a two-thirds majority for any change in the use of city lands, surpassed by the 76 percent of voters who opted to donate the land.
Those opposed to the cross launched no organized effort to defeat the measure. Rather, they prefer to continue fighting in the courts.
James McElroy, the attorney representing the atheist who initially challenged the cross’s presence on public land, told the Union-Tribune, “It still doesn’t mean a d--- thing. Voters should never have voted on it. It’s a waste of taxpayer’s money.”
Don Feder, president of Jews against Anti-Christian Defamation, a group that supported the ballot measure, commented: “This is what we’ve come to. The secularist jihad, led by ACLU mullahs, will stop at nothing to expunge this nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage, and to prevent the government from paying tribute to the Christians who died defending America.”
A superior court judge will hear arguments on the constitutionality of the measure on August 12. A federal judge will hear other arguments related to the memorial on August 15.
Looking to the court battles ahead, Penny Harrington wonders, “How many battles must the vast majority of citizens fight in order to stand against a single atheist and complicit courts before they win the war for reason? Apparently the answer is: as many as it takes for right -- and the right of the majority -- to prevail!”