Quoting Russell Coker (russell@coker.com.au):
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/04/26/christian-is-not-a-religion/
Interesting analysis of a current US legal issue. A cross can only be considered to be a generic sign (not specific to Christianity) if Christianity is the default religious state.
It's less of a current US legal issue than it is a small legal border skirmish in which tiny and inconclusive blows are struck every couple of years. Amendment 1 to the US Constitution provides, in what is called its Disestablishment Clause, that there shall be no official state religion: In the language of 18th Century parliamentary politics, it banned passing of legislation 'respecting an establishment of religion', a reference to the UK's concept of an 'established Church'. At the time, some of your citizenship rights as a British subject hinged on whether you were a congregant of the C. of E. or one of a dozen or so 'conforming' Christian denominations, ones deemed compliant with the C. of E.'s core doctrines, notably reliance on the Book of Common Prayer. If you were a Nonconformist (Quaker, Jew, Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Unitarian, Moslem, atheist, etc.), then you were not eligible for college (prior to the founding of the secular University College London in 1826), to hold a military commission, or serve in public office.[1] The USA's Disestablishment Clause forbade any such segmentation of citizenship rights. That has always been the _substance_ of the Disestablishment Clause -- forbidding tying citizenship rights to religious tenets -- but there have also been 200+ years of small bullshit lawsuits as a result. You've cited one such small bullshit lawsuit. Is permitting placement of a Christmas creche in a public park for ten days in late December an establishment of religion? Sort of in a de-minimus sense. Is a memorial cross on a hillside in a part of the desert nobody cares about, but that is technically part of a public land reserve, an establishment of religion? Sort of in a de-minimus sense. And no person with even half a brain really cares, because it's pretty much just symbolic bullshit. Every few years, somebody with no hobbies decides to pick a fight over such bullshit issues and sue to enjoin the establishment of religion. Everyone gets to waste time in court, and eventually someone works out a settlement to dispose of the plaintiff's timewasting lawsuit and end the de-minimus establishment of religion. That is not a 'current US legal issue'. It's a recurring sideshow of no importance whatsoever, typically fomented by ideologues suffused with the delusional notion of a vital mission to reform the republic. [1] The UK ended substantive legal discrimination against Nonconformists in the 1820s.