Mt. Soledad Cross Case Marked By Raging Anti-Christian Hostility

by Allie Martin and Jenni Parker
October 13, 2005

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(AgapePress) - An attorney with the Thomas More Law Center says comments by an atheist involved in the battle over a veterans memorial in California show that the fight is not about the Constitution but instead is all about attacking Christianity.

For more than 15 years now, atheist Philip Paulson has said he wanted to maintain neutrality between the government and religion. That, he claims, is why he has waged a legal battle to have a 43-foot cross removed from atop Mount Soledad in San Diego, California, where the cross stands as part of a memorial to American war veterans.

However, comments attributed to Paulson were recently discovered on the website of the Atheist Coalition of San Diego -- comments that a lawyer representing the city in its 16-year fight to keep the Mt. Soledad cross in place believes reveal much about what is driving one man's war against the Christian symbol central to local landmark and war memorial.

Charles LiMandri of the Thomas More Law Center says he had someone investigate to find out what Paulson has been saying behind the scenes and the atheist combatant "has just said some phenomenally shocking things" in reference to Christianity. "I don't know if you want me to repeat it or not," the attorney cautions, "because I don't want to offend."

But according to his sources, LiMandri says Paulson has called for "a full-out attack on Jesus" and "takes these basic truths that we accept as the revelation of God and just drags them through the mud." The atheist's reported comments allegedly included crude references to Jesus, God, and Mary, and the Christian lawyer claims to have other documents that detail the man's vehement hostility toward Christianity.

"People need to know what we're dealing with," the attorney says, "because most atheists that you would talk to don't care about religious symbols on public property. It doesn't really mean anything to them. They'll look at the cross or they'll look at the Ten Commandments and they'll say, 'Well, I don't believe in that, but if someone else does, fine.'"

But then, LiMandri adds, there are people like Phil Paulson who, in his singular hostility towards Christianity, "is a very small minority -- pretty much a minority of one." The Thomas More Law Center representative says people like Paulson apparently "believe they just hate God, and they're out to hurt him to the extent that they can eradicate his presence entirely from the public square."

The Mt. Soledad cross has been challenged as a violation of the California Constitution, which document prohibits the display of religious symbols on state land. Last November, voters rejected a ballot initiative that would have authorized sale of the land to a private entity, and the measure was defeated amid widespread confusion over its wording.

Then, in May, after a massive signature-gathering effort by supporters of the Mt. Soledad cross, San Diego's City Council agreed to allow a measure called Proposition A on a July special election mayoral ballot. That measure proposed a handover of the land on which the Mt. Soledad veterans memorial stands to the U.S. Department of the Interior, which would make the property federal land, federal laws being less restrictive than California's state code.

In the July election, an overwhelming 76 percent of the voters approved the transfer. However, according to a FOX News report, San Diego City Attorney Michael Aguirre told local press that transferring the cross from the city to the federal government would be unconstitutional if done primarily to preserve a religious symbol.

Opponents of the cross filed lawsuits, arguing that Proposition A was illegal and, last week, San Diego County Superior Court Judge Patricia Yim Cowett agreed. In her ruling, the judge said the claim that the Mt. Soledad cross is a military memorial to be saved as a landmark is "a sham."