Reply #2: NO that is NOT the Opinion of the Supreme Court

[happyslug]

The opinion of Justice Kennedy is quite clear, he is upholding the right of the Federal Government to sell land so that a Veteran's Group can maintain a War Memorial on that plot of land (Technically it is an exchange of land, the one acre the cross in one for anther five acre parcel inside the park's boundary but not previously owned by the National Park Service). The key to Kennedy is that the cross has been in the park since 1934 and no one complained about it till 2002 (an unstated supporting key is the Cross had been put up by the VFW not a religious group). 70 years is a long time and in his opinion shows that the cross long ago (if it ever did) have any religious significance EXCEPT that it was on Federal law. Once removed from Federal law that is no longer a problem and he saw no difference between physically moving the cross to another location from selling the land in a matter long permitted by Congress (General Rule if you want a piece of Federal land you can sometime get it if you have another larger piece of property the government also wants, that is a long practice on both the State and Federal Level).

If this was a more recent cross, even Scalia and Thomas would have ordered it removed. The Court does NOT want to impose modern sensibility on issues like this cross in regards to monuments built during past periods with a substantially different set of sensibilities. If the religious symbol is long standing, does NOT directly offend a religion and not overwhelmingly seen by most people as imposing a religion the courts will tend to leave such symbols stay. If someone was asking to put up this cross today, the Court will NOT permit it, but what do you do with something that has been there 70 years and built during a time period when no one had any objection to it being built?

Please note one of the factor in this case is the land is to be owned by the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) NOT a religious group and has always been viewed as a WWI war memorial, even when built. Thus the court upheld the cross, but would not do so for something built today or anything built since the 1954 Supreme Court Decision as to Prayers in School. The Court has come to view that decision as a watershed and the point where local Governments should have known better then to permit such structures. The problem is prior to that date the US Supreme Court had been unclear as to what was separation of Church and State and had left that up to the States to decide. In that 1954 Decision the Supreme Court accepted that the States HAD not done a good job as to separation of Church and State and started to do so itself, but how do you undo the result of the neglect for the previous 100 years? This has been a problem for the court and has had to decide such cases on a case by case basis, but my point is this case is dealing with very old monuments NOT anything being built today and thus this decision has no affect on anyone's ability to built a religious symbol on Government land today.

The Actual Opinion, if you want to read it:
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-472.pdf

Anther DU site on this issue:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4359888