SUPERVISORS, BUILD UP THAT WALL.

Byline: Bruce J. Einhorn

RECENTLY, a majority of the county Board of Supervisors voted to settle a serious question of separation of church and state raised by the American Civil Liberties Union over the cross contained in the Los Angeles County seal.

The supervisors decided to prospectively remove the cross from the seal, rather than spend taxpayer money to replace any items or stationery on which the current seal is already in use. The ACLU agreed to the compromise, and the probability of protracted, divisive and expensive litigation was thus avoided.

We at the Anti-Defamation League approve of the compromise reached, and we applaud the Board of Supervisors for the constitutionality and common sense of its judgment.

No reasonable person should doubt the significance of the cross as a symbol of the Christian faith, one embraced with reverence by millions of county residents and one respected by all people of good will. Moreover, no reasonable student of California history should deny the importance of Christianity - and the Spanish missionaries who spread it - to the settlement of Los Angeles County. The Christian cross should not be disparaged any more than the Jewish Star of David, the Islamic crescent and other symbols of other religious and ethnic groups that have helped establish and enhance our pluralistic community.

At the same time, the enduring success of our democracy here in Los Angeles County and throughout the United States has owed much to that right found in the very First Amendment to our federal Constitution: the freedom from any law respecting an establishment of religion, which, in the words of that conscience of American Liberty, Thomas Jefferson, ensures a ``wall of separation'' between church - or synagogue, or mosque - and state.

This separation guarantees that, while all religions are entitled to respect and freedom of worship, no one faith may be favored by government over any other - ever. That our political institutions must remain neutral with respect to the religious choices of our people has prevented our cities, counties, states and nation from becoming the Balkanized battlegrounds of religious bloodshed so prevalent in other parts of the world, including the former Yugoslavia, the Middle East and South Asia and Central Asia, where the separation of church and state is decidedly not the law of the land.

Indeed, the Establishment Clause of our First Amendment has created a free-enterprise zone for religious exercise in the United States, which in typical American fashion has produced the most diverse - both in religions and nonreligious ways - residents in the world. The wall of separation is a monument to our country's decency, and it should not be defaced or torn down. Its every brick protects the crosses, the stars and the crescents around our necks from the intolerance of a hateful mob or a jealous government.

The future removal of the cross from the county government seal prevents the appearance of government endorsement of one religion at the expense of all other creeds. Government endorsement is by its very nature exclusionary: It expresses a preference for some residents over others, alienating the latter at a time of war, when local and national respect for diversity should be stressed and increased.

The Christian cross does not need the assistance of any bureaucracy's seal to keep its luster and meaning intact. In fact, it would demean and insult the religious significance of a cross, a star or a crescent to conclude that only its inclusion on county stationery may save it from oblivion.

Prior to the enactment of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, Americans who questioned the doctrines and symbols of state-sponsored religions - including the sacrifice and divinity of Jesus represented by the Christian cross - were subject to fines, imprisonment, floggings and even the piercing of their ``seditious'' tongues with hot irons. Now, under the rule of the Establishment Clause, the cross remains a symbol of value - and so do the people who wear it or wear other tokens of God's grace.

Our county seal matters - but our common humanity matters most of all.