According to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, it is an outrageous conclusion that a war memorial featuring a cross honors only Christian war dead. His statement needs to be seen in context which makes it even worse.
The context would seem to be the case before the court, Salazar vs. Buono, which deals with a 6 1/2-foot cross on a WW I war memorial constructed 75 years ago. The case is complex because the land was once public land but now belongs to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Strictly speaking, a cross on private land would be insensitive to the Jewish war dead buried there, but whether its illegal, well leave to the court. The court could also decide that Congress acted illegally in transferring ownership of the land to a private entity also a topic that avoids the real context of Justice Scalias statement.
The real, damning context of his statement is the oral arguments during the case. ACLU lawyer Peter Eliasberg made the obvious, clear, indisputable point that a cross on a memorial signifies that Jesus is the son of G-d and died to redeem mankind for our sins, and thus could not be a secular memorial. In effect, Eliasberg simply said: Christianity is Christianity.
Scalia responded, astonishingly, that Christianity is not Christianity that the cross was a common symbol of the resting place of the dead.
Common to whom, Mr. Scalia? Common to you. Common to adherents of Christianity. Common to the majority culture. Yes. But not common to anyone else. As Eliasberg retorted, as well he should, I have been in Jewish cemeteries. There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew.
Scalia responded: I don’t think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that cross honors are the Christian war dead. I think thats an outrageous conclusion.
Outrageous to whom, Mr. Scalia? Outrageous to you and your religiously imperialistic, Catholic sensibilities. But to anyone else, the conclusion is perfectly reasonable.
We shall tell you what we think is outrageous, Mr. Scalia. We think it is outrageous that people who were murdered burned to death at the stake for refusing to bow to the cross need anyone, let alone a high arbiter of the law, to tell them that they must accept the cross as an honor. That is what is outrageous, Mr. Scalia. For you to suggest to Jewish citizens of this land that a cross honors their war dead is the outrage, and the only outrage, here.
Should the Jewish martyrs burned by the Catholic Church at the stake have their ashes buried under a cross, Mr. Scalia? Would that honor them?
The point is so simple that it is embarrassing that a justice on the Supreme Court cannot grasp the obvious, namely, that a cross, a Christian symbol, honors Christian dead; that other symbols, from other religions, honor the dead of those religions; and that each religion deserves the right to have its war dead honored as it sees fit.
The point is so simple that we have to wonder whether bigotry and not mere obtuseness or ignorance animates Justice Scalia on this issue. Again, the point is not the case at hand: Is the 6 1/2-foot cross legal or illegal? We have no opinion. The point is the principle, stripped of the complexities of the current case.
The point is a Supreme Court justice of the United States who lacks basic respect for people who profess a religion different from his.
Justice Scalia undermines the credibility he brings to other critical issues, such as the definition of marriage, on behalf of which he has argued well. Just how seriously one will take these arguments of his on this or any other issue before the court, when he cannot grasp why a cross does not honor the Jewish dead, is now an open question.
