Until recently, the official seal of Los Angeles County bore three very small cross emblems recalling the county’s heritage and founding. A lawsuit by the ACLU ended that, and the religious symbols have since been scrubbed from the seal.
The Constitution’s establishment clause forms the legal basis of the ACLU’s argument:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...
To me, it seems pretty extreme to argue that the presence of a religious symbol on a county seal is tantamount to the establishment of an official religion. If you’ve seen a supermarket tabloid in the last fifty years, you’d know that Los Angeles County isn’t exactly being run by fundamentalist Christians.
Nevertheless, enough judges agree with the ACLU that, bit by bit, different facets of our country’s history are being etched out if they contain any hint of the religious backgrounds of our founders. That’s as much a crime against history as pretending that Martin Luther King wasn’t black.
The controversy surrounding the Los Angeles County seal gave an opportunity for Anna of Liberty Belles to perform her own video investigation, complete with a guest appearance of Dennis Prager.
