Mojave Cross Memorial Vandalized; Atheists Offer $5,000 for Alternative Memorial

The Mojave Cross Memorial has been one of those mostly symbolic issues that really, really annoys a lot of atheists. In what is a fairly common story across the U.S., a Christian veteran's group decided to place a Christian cross on public land as a memorial to dead veterans. First, they were told that this was illegal (and, atheists note, not really a memorial for "veterans", but for "Christian veterans" - very pertinent to this discussion is the fact that yes, atheists really can be found in foxholes, and in fact are slightly over-represented in the armed services), so they talked to their buddies in the legislature which held a public auction for, coincidentally, the same few square yards of land as this group wanted, and that, coincidentally, no other group was told about. I guess it was one of those private public auctions?

Now, for any non-atheist that's reading, the reason why atheists get upset about this is because 1) we get told pretty constantly that we deserve to be tortured for all eternity for daring to reach our own conclusions about the divine; 2) that this is a Christian nation (unlike what the Founding Fathers said), and if we don't like that, then we should leave the country; 3) most of us that de-converted from religion have lost friends and/or family members as a result; 4) many atheists have to worry about losing their jobs if anyone finds out we're atheists, and (I realize this is anecdotal) most atheists I've talked to know other atheists that already have lost their jobs; and 5) there are an endless number of blue laws, or likewise barely legal laws made purely for the benefit of Christians, or to promote Christianity, or to make everyone in the country practice Christian rules which have zero evidence of doing anything productive, but that Christians assert will save people's souls, whether they want to be saved or not (or need to be saved, rather) - the point being that when most atheists look at a Christian cross, we don't see a happy, loving symbol of tolerance, what we see are the threats, the bigotry, the intolerance, and the use of force to get us to practice a religion we don't believe in, all being sanctioned by a government whose members are almost exclusively Christian.

So, even though the Mojave Cross Memorial is still basically symbolic, it's a really raw reminder that the law just doesn't seem to apply to Christians the way that it applies to atheists, and as a result there have been a lot of efforts by some atheists to have Christian symbols like these removed from public property. Very frustratingly for atheists, whenever we say we don't like Christmas for some reason, Christians cry that there's a war on Christmas, that the country is anti-Christian, and how dare we assault a Christian holiday, and the like - but when we say we don't like a Christian cross on public land, suddenly the Christian cross is not so Christian, in fact it's a "secular symbol of death" - and the courts tend to agree, so the crosses stay.

Unfortunately, the Mojave Cross Memorial was recently torn down, illegally. The perpetrator has yet to be found, so we don't technically know who did it, but while some atheists like to think that it was a Christian trying to make atheists look bad (this would not be the first time this has happened), I think that in this case there's a good chance it actually was an atheist. Now, I think the cross should never have been there, that it was only barely legal in the first place, and that any reasonable judge would see how the spirit of the law has been totally ignored, but none of that justifies vandalism. We all have a responsibility to follow the law, even if we're the only ones doing it.

However, in one final twist in the story, the Atheist Alliance International (AAI) has put up $5,000 dollars for a new memorial, albeit with the caveat that it be a symbol inclusive of all war veterans, not just the Christian ones. We'll have to wait and see how this one pans out - technically, the land is still owned by that Christian veteran's organization, I believe, but on the other hand its legality was justified by the grandfather clause (that is, it had just been there so long that the Justice Department wasn't going to do anything about it). Since the grandfather clause only applies to old monuments, would it justify a new monument? And would the organization that owns the land accept an inclusive symbol? It's tough to say what will happen. We'll just have to wait and see.

Link: http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-8947-LA-Atheism-Examiner~y2010m5d14-Atheists-offer-5000-towards-alternative-to-Mojave-Cross-memorial#