It’s not often I have the opportunity to spend part of my workday devoted to an issue near and dear to the heart of my faraway hometown. Suffice to say the interests of Georgia and Southern California are, well, different. (Kids, if you haven’t had this discussion with your parents, be sure to do so now.) Yet, apparently, there are some concerns that cross regional lines, and today I got to work on a letter addressing a San Diego legal issue that I have been aware of for most of my upbringing.
By way of introduction:
Behold the picturesque (and apparently highly offensive) Latin-style cross perched just east of the summit of Mt. Soledad, near La Jolla, San Diego, California, United States, the world, the universe, etc. This cross has been in place since 1954. (An earlier cross, erected in 1913, had been placed there to honor World War I veterans.) Being a military town, San Diego is home to many such memorials. However, about seventeen years ago, some of the anti-religion ACLU-funded crowd decided the cross shouldn’t be there anymore. So they took the City to court (at the cost of how many of taxpayers’ millions?) until one court cracked and said a cross couldn’t stand on City land under the California Constitution. The good people of San Diego passed, I believe, a number of resolutions demonstrating overwhelming support for the cross (one passed with a handy 76 percent of the vote). The courts didn’t care. So the City sold the property to a non-profit (aptly named the Mt. Soledad Memorial Association), which created a Korean War memorial around the cross. After another series of legal battles, the City received an ultimatum from a typical piece-of-work leftist judge earlier this year: dismantle the cross by August 1, or the City will be fined $5,000 per day it remains standing where a cross has stood for almost a hundred years.
In a shocking turn of events, a Kennedy did something right. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy issued a temporary stay in favor of the City to allow time for further appeals.
Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, my hometown congressman, the wonderful Representative Duncan Hunter, introduced legislation that would transfer the Mt. Soledad Cross and surrounding land to the federal government. H.R. 5683 passed the House of Representatives yesterday by an astoundingly bipartisan vote of 349 – 74.
And I got to write a letter about it today. *grin*
I am taking a wild guess that California’s Senate delegation isn’t crazy about the bill, but who knows? Maybe it can be hotlined or brought to the Senate floor under suspension or something like that. In any case, it was fun to be the only one in the office to know all the details of an issue for once. And it will be really wonderful if this issue can get settled once and for all.
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I’d like to close with a quick prayer request. The little girl I sponsor through World Vision is Lebanese. Her name is Rita, and she will be turning 5 in September. Given the circumstances in that part of the world, pray for strength and protection for this little one!
1 comment:
Mt. Soledad, my favorite New Years Eve destination. For a few years in a row in college, Terence, Leonora and I made a tradition of playing the basketball shooting game at Family Fun Center, buying little army men with the tickets, loading up on Mexican food and driving to the top of Mt. Soledad to see the fireworks. You can see fireworks from all over San Diego and Mexico from up there. It's also the only place I've ever peed in a cup outside the doctor's office, ha! I'm glad to see it'll be around for at least a bit longer.
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