Blumner cross at Scalia

Ah, Robyn Blumner. Missed you while I was vacationing from the blog, my Blumñata.

Blumner this past week weighed in on the state/church divide case involving the Mojave Desert war memorial cross.

clipped from www.panoramio.com

(photo credit: Frank Keeney)

Blumner's opening argument:

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is so insensitive to the religious beliefs of others that during an oral argument on Wednesday he had the nerve to denounce the idea that Jewish veterans may not feel honored by a Latin cross war memorial that sits atop a rocky slope at California's Mojave National Preserve.

1) This opening, as it stands, is an irrelevant ad hominem (personal attack on Scalia). Any degree of insensitivity on Scalia's part is irrelevant to the application of the law, minus additional considerations.

2) Additionally, the argument appears to set up a straw man. Scalia does not appear to denounce the idea that a Jewish veteran may not feel honored by a Latin cross war memorial. Rather, he points out a non sequitur in the argument of the plaintiff's lawyer.

Blumner's account adequately illustrates point #2:

"What would you have them erect?" Scalia, a devout Catholic, scoffed. "Some conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David, and you know, a Muslim half moon and star?"

"I have been in Jewish cemeteries," responded ACLU attorney Peter Eliasberg, who represented Frank Buono, a former National Park Service official who objected to the cross. "There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew."

To that Scalia retorted with irritation: "I don't think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead. I think that's an outrageous conclusion."

Eliasberg's answer to Scalia's question wasn't exactly direct, was it?

Scalia's point was that the cross as a grave marker carries a meaning far broader than "this dead person was a Christian." In cultural terms, it is seen as just a grave marker. That some might not see it as just a grave marker does not erase the point. That is the point Scalia stressed. Eliasberg and Blumner applied evasive maneuvers. Standard in the sleazy lawyer playbook.

With a bad first step, how will Blumner proceed with the second?

Outrageous? Really? And if the only monument at an officially designated American war memorial was a large Muslim crescent and star, would Scalia feel included?

Highly doubtful, since there is no parallel between using the cross as a grave marker and using the Muslim crescent and star as such. Blumner knows better, doesn't she?

The cross is so ubiquitous in graveyards that it has become a symbol for death, as shown in the advertising campaign to reduce driving speed.

So Blumner's question is just another attempt to distract from the point.

Next?

After recounting how the cross has been replaced at the memorial a number of times, Blumner veers to a different tack:

It is telling that Congress has weighed in three times to try to keep the cross where it is. Such ridiculous lengths suggest what we all know: Without a constitutional brake, government will use its power to promote the majority's religious beliefs.

The majority's belief that the cross has become a general symbol of death in addition to being an explicitly Christian symbol? Or some other majority belief? No doubt Blumner sees the cross only as an attempt to ram Christian belief down her avowedly secularist esophagus. Scalia argues for folks like Blumner to open their eyes to the broader meaning of the cross. But Blumner will have none of it.

Scalia, (wi)ll take any opportunity to water down church-state separation, even if he has to delude himself into thinking that a Christian cross honors people of other faiths.

In other words, Blumner apparently denies that the Christian cross can separately have meaning as a symbol of death. Eyes, ears and any other relevant sense closed to Scalia's point.

Blumñata!



Note: Of course the clipped photo does not show a cross, per se. It shows the current state of the Mojave memorial, with the arms of the cross obscured under court order.