Crossing Mount Soledad.

"Stand more than 800 feet high underneath the shade of a 43-foot cross, and enjoy gorgeous, 360-degree views from this prime memorial and picnic, photo and sunset spot."

The above enticement appears in the online entertainment guide of the San Diego Union-Tribune under "Attractions" and no doubt serves its purpose in directing visitors to the beautiful vista located atop Mount Soledad in San Diego, California. To be sure, the view is something to see: rooftops of multi-million-dollar homes lead down to the shimmering Pacific on the west and north up the coastline towards Orange County. Straight down to the east, cars speed along California Interstate 5 with the Cuyamaca and Laguna Mountains in the distance. To the south one spots the city skyline and the Mexican border beyond.

I first drove up to Mount Soledad Natural Park in the winter of 1978. Winding my way along the steep road, I came to the first summit upon which sit a cluster of radio and television transmitters. I was shocked to see what came next--some 200 yards away was an unmistakable symbol of the Christian religion displayed on government property. The Mount Soledad Easter Cross, as it was then known, rose twenty-nine feet in the air above a fourteen-foot stepped pedestal, its arm span measuring twelve feet across. It occurred to me then that a "natural" park shouldn't feature a large humanmade centerpiece and that the land wasn't called "Mount Soledad Supernatural Park." That's how the saga began.

I am the plaintiff who filed a lawsuit on May 31, 1989, against the City of San Diego with the aim to remove the twenty-four-ton Latin cross from the public park. A federal judge ruled in my favor in 1991, but the city sought numerous federal and state court delays during which time the site was renamed the "Mount Soledad Memorial" in honor of war veterans. Then on August 14, 2006, President George W. Bush signed into law House Resolution 5683 that would transfer ownership of the Mount Soledad Natural Park property, along with the Latin cross, from the City of San Diego to the federal government by applying the powers of eminent domain. Now the U.S. Department of Defense owns the property and cross. What transpired during the seventeen years in between the suit and this event is outlined in the accompanying timeline. What I offer in this article is the rationale for taking on a cross that, it could be said, was never mine to bear.

My mother named me Philip Kevin Paulson, but over the course of the past seventeen years I have been publicly renamed "Atheist Philip Paulson" I make no bones about being a Humanist and an atheist, however. I'm happily skeptical of claims regarding supernaturalism, monotheism, and polytheism and am totally "out of the closet."

I learned how to question religion when I was a kid growing up in rural Northwestern Wisconsin, concluding that all deistic god concepts were unbelievable, superstitious claptrap. I am an atheist because my mother, now deceased, who I loved very much, was a devout Christian whose strongly religious, mentally rigid mindset served as an admonition of what not to do. In a Lutheran summer bible school class I asked a question of my pastor: "Who created God?" He slapped me across the face and called my mother and said that I had blasphemed God. I thus learned what blasphemy was all about. That is, I learned that "blasphemy" is the expression of honest thought, and that Christians aren't permitted to ask questions that challenge the existence of the deity. So, from an early age I decided I was an atheist.

Another event that comes to mind is when I was fighting the Viet Cong in Vietnam, where many of my buddies were killed in action. In the midst of battle I looked up in the sky and yelled, "You are not worthy of my worship!" During this horrifying moment on the frontlines, I again confirmed that I had no faith in God, that I was an atheist.

A third defining experience was as an undergraduate student attending the University of Wisconsin. I took a course in Sociology of Religion and the professor opened up my mind with two fundamental questions to direct toward any religious text that discoursed on the subject of the deity: Who wrote it? Who said it? As an atheist I had become skeptical of theological claims and interested in both the scientific method and the advancement of science and technology. History also taught me that whenever supernatural religions were the ruling authority of the day, civilization waned, whereas when science and technology were encouraged, civilization advanced.

So, given that I've been open about my identity, the San Diego Union-Tribune renamed me Atheist Philip Paulson. In addition to always suspecting the characterization to be pejorative, showing a distinct bias for the "Save the Cross" advocacy of certain of the publishing company's reporters, editors, and corporate board, I also find it unfortunate that the newspaper intentionally or negligently omitted the fact that I am also a U.S. Army veteran. So many San Diegans were unaware that I had volunteered for enlistment on April 3, 1966, and served two tours of frontline, combat duty in the Republic of Vietnam (1966 to 1968) with Company C, 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry, 173rd Airborne Brigade (Separate). I was honorably discharged after a total of six years in both active duty and active military reserves.

The city of San Diego has argued that while the cross atop Mount Soledad has religious significance it also serves a secular purpose in honoring war veterans. I will say first that nothing marked this site as a tribute to veterans until, some six months after I filed my original case, a small plaque dated November 11, 1989, suddenly appeared at the base of the cross, dedicating it "as a tribute to all branches of the Armed Forces of U.S.A. servicemen and women." As inclusive as that may sound, the presence of the giant cross as a symbol of that tribute excludes all non-Christian veterans and violates both federal and California state constitutions as follows:

"Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion."--Establishment clause, First Amendment, United States Constitution.

"Free exercise and enjoyment of religion without discrimination or preference are guaranteed"--Article I, Section 4, California State Constitution.

"Neither the Legislature, nor any county, city and county, township, school district, or other municipal corporation, shall ever make an appropriation, or pay from any public fund whatever, or grant anything to or in aid of any religious sect, church, creed, or sectarian purpose"--Article XVI, Section 5, California State Constitution.

The cross is inarguably a Christian symbol with a single, sectarian message. It isn't a universal symbol that represents all veterans, let alone all people, and it will never be my symbol. I don't consider it sacred nor do I have any intention of ever again going up to the Mount Soledad public park as long as a Latin cross stands there to shun patriotic, non-Christian U.S. veterans like me.

But still the Mount Soledad cross stands like a neon sign atop the highest elevation in San Diego and the taxpayers thus offer free advertising to the Christian religion (they have also shouldered untold amounts in legal fees resulting from the case). The cross is an in-your-face sight to behold, visible from Interstate 5 and surrounded by an imposing spiked-top fence--the site, it could be said, of a seventeen-year religious war atop Mount Soledad.

For me the fight has always been about equal treatment under the law. As for my opponents, after nearly two decades of litigation and orders by a federal judge to remove the cross, any reasonable person would conclude that the relentless fight in the courts to keep the cross standing on government property shows both an abuse of power and a "preference" for the Christian religion. The flagrant violation of civil liberties against non-Christian veterans is highly offensive, highly objectionable, and a mockery of the time-honored American traditional value of church-state separation.

In this struggle, the religious right has proved itself a formidable foe, represented by three wealthy law firms--the American Center for Law and Justice, Thomas More Law Center, and American Civil Rights Union. Religious groups have lobbied publicly-elected officials to keep the cross at Mount Soledad Natural Park and have criticized the American Civil Liberties Union for representing me. In actual fact, the ACLU hasn't represented me as a plaintiff since 1997, when lames McElroy was substituted as attorney of record (a role he has maintained ever since). The ACLU represented me from 1992 to 1997 solely for federal appeals court litigation work on the cross case.

American veterans' organizations have also entered the flay, spreading false claims that the 9,387 Latin crosses and Stars of David honoring World War II veterans killed during the invasion at Normandy will be removed if the Latin cross on Mount Soledad is removed. The commander of the American Legion made the false and outrageous claim that the removal of the preeminent symbol of the government-sponsored Mount Soledad Memorial would eventually result in the removal of all individual crosses on the grave markers of all U.S. military veterans who had selected them.

This nonsense is easily refuted. First of all, the United States has no control over the sovereign laws of France and therefore no jurisdiction over Christian crosses placed at Normandy. French sovereign law the display of religious symbols on their government-owned cemeteries and properties. Only the citizens of France have legal standing to file a lawsuit in order to remove them. Secondly, individual ownership and display of a Latin cross on a U.S. military veteran's headstone or grave marker located inside a government military cemetery is constitutional and quite different from government ownership and maintenance of the forty-three-foot Mount Soledad cross inside a public park. The latter implies government endorsement of one religion over all others and is thus unconstitutional.

Now the federal government owns the cross and the case will eventually reach the Supreme Court of the United States.

The U.S. Constitution ensures that there is no national church, no legal coercion of belief or practice, and no legally enforced favoritism for one faith over another: The framers understood that religious liberty flourishes only if the government leaves religion alone, and they intended for citizens of the United States to be given equal treatment under the law--not preferential treatment. So the reason I have been fighting city hall and the federal government for seventeen years over the Mount Soledad Easter Cross is because I am believer. I believe strongly in the freedom of speech and the freedom of and from religion. I believe strongly in the jurisprudence principle of "equal treatment under the law" and "religious neutrality," and I believe these concepts aren't just constitutional; they are moral. They speak to basic considerations of fairness.

I have also spent seventeen years fighting for these ideas so that no one else has to. As a Humanist I have remained committed to fighting scofflaw government in an effort to bring about positive social change supporting all members of the community. Instead of spending time on legislation like HR 5683, which transferred the property containing the Mount Soledad Easter Cross from the City of San Diego to federal jurisdiction through eminent domain, Congress and the president should be working together to promote tolerance and understanding o fall religious or nonreligious beliefs. Moreover, the values of equal treatment under the law and government impartiality towards religion ought to be regarded as the traditional family values that they are.

Undoubtedly, one could say the cross saga has gone beyond belief. For me it has become a matter of duty, as reflected in the words of James Madison, the fourth U.S. President and "Father of the Constitution:"

   It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment
   on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to
   be the first duty of citizens, and one of the noblest
   characteristics of the late Revolution. The freeman
   of America did not wait till usurped power
   had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled
   the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences
   in the principle, and they avoided the consequences
   by denying the principle.

Thus the struggle for liberty continues.