When is a Cross a Cross?
That is the question Stanley Fish at The New York Times asks when summarizing the Salazar v. Buono decision made last week by the Supreme Court. Fish looks at the surreal world of Establishment Clause jurisprudence and finds Kennedy’s assertion that the cross, in this case placed in the Mojave desert on public land to commemorate WWI dead, was not intended to “promote a Christian message,” is perverting the symbol with patriotism:
Notice what this paroxysm of patriotism had done: it has taken the Christianity out of the cross and turned it into an all-purpose means of marking secular achievements.