Bad people Stole the Mojave Cross. I said, "Bad, people."

The Mojave Cross memorial to WWI veterans, recently the subject of a Supreme Court ruling that decided that the image of the cross, which was the implement upon which the Savior-God of a specific religion that will naturally remain nameless since it's not about them! tragically and apotheosistically (dude, that is a word or if it's not, it should be) died, was actually not an endorsement of any particular religious creed at all, at all--was stolen! Totally ripped off. They took it down and away.

I'm going to say this as a message to the people who did this: "You are bad people." If the Supreme Court says the thing is legal and you disagree, while you may look on what you are doing as simple civil disobedience, what you're really doing is being a little bit of a jerk. So what if a religious display on public land is probably not the sort of thing the government should be endorsing; the over-arching sentiment that the soldiers who fought in WWI deserve to be memorialized is still valid, and the act of theft and vandalism is still wrong--two wrongs don't make a right. The act is only a good statement of civil disobedience if it raises consciousness about what you're trying to say. If it just pisses people off, it isn't effective and even hurts what you have to say.

A more audacious solution, like a big-ass Magen David or Buddha (I really have no damn figures on Buddhists having anything to do with WWI) or even a big old Out Campaign "A" being raised in the vicinity might have got some brain cells working about how the monument could be more inclusive. But I don't think that just taking it down does the trick. I think it revelatory that people might see the area as "desecrated", which is a word we use regarding "holy" things being distrurbed--but that itself isn't going to raise the consciousness of someone who really thinks the cross is for everybody.