A few thouhgts.... Where is Paulson getting the money to keep up his fight? How the hell did one person beat an entire city? Why, not once but twice, was the sale of the land stopped? Paulson's argument was that the cross was on city property, and that the city was promoting Christianity. If the city wanted to sell the land to a private individual, or group, they should have been allowed to do so. The problem would have been solved. This whole thing stinks.
the cross definitely shouldnt be there, but i dont get why they didnt allow the sale of the land. i guess becaue they wanted to sell it to another federal agency, the parks service. crosses are fine on individual graves, indicating the dead person was christian, but not as a large singular thing. why not put a muslim crescent thing there or a spaghetti monster statue? edit, i guess i understand the blocking of the sale, it is clearly religious discrimination to sell land only to christians. if public land is to be sold, it should go to the highest bidder, even if that bidder is a nazi.
It did. The group was the high bidder out of five and paid $106,000.00 for the 1/2 acre. The full court of appeals reversed its own earlier ruling that the sale was ok. They reversed based on the grounds that the sale gave the winning bidder an unfair ecomomic advantage since, being they supported the use of the cross, the sale allowed them to keep the cross to use for the memorial. I think the court reached as far as they could to pull this one out their butts, but, when you go to trial in San Francisco, what can you expect? http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/coa/newopinions.nsf/1F76C4C8CC74788588256AB000019355/$file/0055406.pdf?openelement http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/coa/newopinions.nsf/C7CBFC80E3D385D188256BE300803DBE/$file/0055406eb.pdf?openelement
i understand that reasoning, because the government shouldnt be improving land in such a way that only has value for christians and then selling it to them. but still, in this case it seems like the smart thing to do would be to just sell to the highest bidder and forget the whole thing ever happened. the stupid thing was building the cross in the first place.
oh, that is much worse than i thought. that document you linked show that initially they wanted to sell the small amount of land with the cross on it, which is ridiculous. and they attached other factors to the sale, including what the buyer intended to do with the property, and those factors would be considered by the government seller, who clearly intended to sell it top the christians. they shouldnt be breaking up the property into smaller parts to preserve the cross. they should either tear the cross down, or sell the entire propery to a bidder, and not consider if the buyer plans to maintin the cross.
