BIG OUTCRY OVER TINY CROSS BOARD'S COMPROMISE ON COUNTY SEAL SPARKS OUTRAGE.

Byline: Troy Anderson Staff Writer

In a massive public outcry, angry letters, e-mails and phone calls flooded the offices of the Los Angeles County supervisors on Thursday after they agreed to the ACLU's demand to remove a tiny Christian cross from the county seal.

Four conservative legal foundations offered to fight the case to the Supreme Court, accusing the county of caving in to ``anti-religious bias.''

And Cardinal Roger Mahony of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, who blocked an effort to banish the cross from the seal a decade ago, weighed in with an open letter to the supervisors who voted 3-2 on Tuesday to remove the cross under threat of a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

``To remove the cross would be to deny the historical record,'' Mahony wrote. ``I represent some 40 percent of the inhabitants in this great county who strongly feel that 'being politically correct' also entails being 'historically correct.'''

Mahony cited historical documents that noted the cross was placed on the seal adopted in 1957 to recall ``the historical importance of the Catholic missions'' in county history.

The issue came up in 1994 when the American Jewish Congress urged Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke to remove the cross from the seal. Burke drafted a motion to have the cross removed, but the supervisors never voted on the motion and it died following Mahony's letter.

This time the issue was raised by the ACLU after the city of Redlands recently bowed to its threatened lawsuit over a similar cross symbol.

On Tuesday, just days after the ACLU threatened legal action against the county, the Board of Supervisors held a closed-door meeting and voted to negotiate with the ACLU to replace the cross with depictions of a Spanish mission and Native Americans to avoid a lawsuit.

The Democrats on the board, supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky, Burke and Gloria Molina, voted to negotiate. On Wednesday, the ACLU reached a tentative agreement with the county.

The Democratic supervisors did not return repeated phone calls Thursday for comment.

But other officials acknowledged that the public outrage over their decision was bringing in an unprecedented number of angry e-mails, letters and phone calls.

``We alone have received more than 600 e-mails and 200 phone calls in the last 24 hours,'' said John Musella, spokesman for Board of Supervisors Chairman Don Knabe, who opposed the ACLU agreement.

``Every single one of them supported keeping the cross on the seal, except one. This is the largest amount of outrage to a county issue we've ever seen.''

``We have received upwards of 3,000 e-mails and phone calls, all 100 percent in favor of fighting the ACLU to retain the cross on the seal,'' said Tony Bell, spokesman for Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, who also opposed the ACLU agreement.

``Supervisor Antonovich believes that any action to alter the seal should be a decision made by the people of Los Angeles County, not by backroom deals with the ACLU.''

Next Tuesday, Antonovich plans to ask his fellow supervisors to place a measure on the November ballot for county voters to decide whether the cross should remain on the seal, the spokesman said.

Meanwhile, four legal foundations, including the Alliance Defense Fund, the Thomas More Foundation, the Pacific Justice Center and the American Center for Law and Justice, have offered their free legal services to fight the ACLU on behalf of the county.

``Indeed, challenging this symbol of the county's cultural and historical roots, solely because it is religious, smacks of anti-religious bias,'' said Gary S. McCaleb, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund in Scottsdale, Ariz. ``I think this disrespects the religious community and the history of the county.''

ACLU spokesman Tenoch Flores said the same organizations initially offered to defend the city of Redlands in the earlier threat by the ACLU to sue unless the city removed the cross from its seal.

``They decided at the time it would have been a losing case and they were right,'' Flores said. ``This is a publicity stunt, nothing more, nothing less.''

Radio hosts also weighed in on the controversy. Dennis Prager, a nationally syndicated radio host based in Los Angeles at KRLA (870 AM), asked his listeners Thursday to contact the supervisors and express their ``strongest outrage.''

If seals are altered on thousands of county vehicles, buildings, flags, employee badges, uniforms and stationery, the cost could reach ``hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions,'' Antonovich said.

The cross is on a panel with two stars above a depiction of the Hollywood Bowl. The panel is one of six around the seal's main figure, Pomona, a pagan goddess of fruits and trees.

Dennis Mifflin, a social science teacher at Valencia High School in Santa Clarita, said he is considering suing the county for having a pagan goddess on the seal.

``If the cross has to go, the goddess has to go,'' Mifflin said.

Costa Mesa attorney Kenneth Kleinberg, an ACLU member and atheist who represents the family of Millard Sheets, a pre-eminent California artist who drew the seal, said county officials have not located the licensing agreement to determine whether altering the seal would violate Sheets' intellectual property rights.

``How dare anyone considering tampering with his art,'' Kleinberg said. ``And to challenge the artist's intent without consulting the artist, his family or any art expert, I think, is folly on the part of the ACLU.''

Kleinberg also challenged the ACLU on the source of a 1957 letter the civil rights group has touted as key evidence that the cross on the seal is a government endorsement of Christianity.

Troy Anderson, [phone]

troy.anderson(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

(color) no caption (COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA seal)