Whose civil liverties have been violated by the city of Los Angeles acknowledging its history on its seal?
Yes, what you said is silly. But that wasn’t the question.
Crosses in a government cemetary was the question.
Love
Unless you’re trying to tell us that they locked him up, I think you actually mean interment. 
I don’t understand what the fuss is about. The ACLU was right to object to the presence of the cross on the seal because the seal is representative of all citizens of LA including non-Christians. The cross could be considered an endorsement of Christianity over other faiths. However, by placing a cross at the head of somebody’s grave, the government is merely complying with that individual’s presumed or expressed wishes. At the very least, they are the wishes of his family. For the government to do otherwise would be an abuse of the deceased (or his relatives’) first amendment right to freedom of religious expression.
I can understand a libertarian arguing that government shouldn’t be in the business of burying people in the first place but if you accept government in the role of undertaker you can’t expect it to interfere with, or promote, religious expression.
The ACLU don’t seem to be knee jerk anti-religion. I recall a case where the ACLU settled with a school a few years ago after it omitted a student’s comments from the yearbook because of some religious comments she’d made. The ACLU position was that the school had overreacted as far as not establishing a religion and had moved into curtailing her free speech. In a similar vein, if a liberal administration ever tried to have Arlington not decorate graves with religious nonsense, the ACLU would fight that too.
Shit. I didn’t bother to slow down and read Apos’ post including the link to the article about the case I was blathering about. :smack:
Just goes to show that Free Republic is good for something other than an opportunity to troll a little. 
That’s a question that would probably be better suited for one of the other bazillion LA County ACLU threads in this forum.
Crap if that doesn’t look like the worst example of junior modding this board has ever seen - sorry. What I meant is that you’ll probably get a better response and have access to more discussion on the topic in one of the other threads - I know that’s come up.
…proving that Brutus didn’t read DoctorJ’s post about there not having rows of crosses at Arlington. Way to go on the comprehension, Brutus! 
Now there’s the first thing you’ve ever written with personal authority.
[Moderator Hat ON]
rjung, do NOT call Brutus an asshole in this forum.
[Moderator Hat OFF]
Sorry, thought I was safely on the side of the line there. Time to cool my heels in the Penalty Box, eh?
Does everybody appreciate that this thread is based on a hypothetical situation and was started by an agent provocateur who was at best a transient troll and who is now gone. The precept is that because somebody in California has gotten the California ACLU to represent them in a law suit to have a cross taken off the official logo for Los Angeles we are on the verge of having the pinko Commie atheist bastards sue the Department of Defense to have all the religious symbols chiseled off the thousands upon thousands of grave markers at Arlington National Cemetery, and I suppose all the other military cemeteries here and overseas as well. It is all balderdash and the equivalent of throwing a firecracker in the chicken house just for the fun of the seeing the reaction. Our departed friend got what she wanted. She got her (?) reaction. Squawk! Squawk! Flutter! Flutter!
<nitpick>
The singular of “fora” is “forum”.
</nitpick>
I’m pretty cheesed. No pagan symbol? Come on. The military even has pagan priests.
What do we have to do to get recognition, start a Crusade?
Have at it, I say, Zagadka.
There’s also the option of having no symbol at all on the tombstone.
I am looking into the possibility of burial in a veteran’s cemetery and getting my free tombstone, when the time comes.
Hopefully, this won’t be for a good long time, since I’m only in my thirties. But it’s about time to update the will, so it’s a good time to consider these things.
The only thing that would have been a dealbreaker is having my wife buried there with be, and this is no problem at all.
More likely: find three pagans that can agree on a symbol and petition the Dept of Veterans Affairs.
What would you like? Thor’s hammer? The Horned Man? A sheaf of wheat? A Beltane fire?
(I’m not mocking you; I suspect that there simply have not been sufficient (any?) pagans who broached the subject to the VA.)
You don’t have to be buried at a Federal cemetary for the headstone. My mom got my Dad’s headstone through the VA (or whomever) and he is buried in the township cemetary.
I know that. I’m just attracted to the idea. I’ve visited some veteran’s cemeteries, and they seem, uniformly, to be attractive and peaceful places.
I enjoy the company of veterans in my life, so I think, given the option, I’d choose this.
Besides, the plot is free, provided in compensation for my years of service. I’d just as soon not have my family pay Shady Hills for a plot the government owes me anyway.
I know it’s not Arlington, but I just saw an episode of Mail Call on the History Channel where they showed the American cemetery at Normandy, France, which is where over 10,000 American soldiers who died on D-Day are buried.
Every single headstone I could see was a cross. Every single one of them. Even the grave of an unknown American soldier was marked with a cross, and if that wasn’t enough, the cross was engraved with the words “known only to God.”
I can’t believe that every soldier who died on D-Day, including the unidentified ones, was a Christian.
They aren’t all crosses.
If you look at the photo in this link
http://www.alvernia.edu/academics/history/silbey/silbey-Pages/Image5.html
You can see a five-pointed star. In the military cemeteries, I’ve visited in Europe, there are mostly crosses, but every now and then there is a star.
Jewish soldiers buried at Normandy were buried under a tombstone that was topped by a Star of David. From a distance, this looks a little like a cross.
The simple fact is, there were far fewer open atheists in the '40s. The assumption that an unknown soldier should be buried under a cross was probably a pretty correct one, especially at the time.