Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Mojave Cross

Our friends over at StopTheACLU have posted about an ACLU effort to bring down a cross that was erected in the Mojave Desert. They went to court and got the judge to have the cross obscured. The effect is incredibly eerie. Courtzero made a movie of the cross and I posted it to YouTube. Watch the whole thing.



What kind of weird, obsessive creeps would take the time to go to court to have this done? It's as if they have a list of all the religous symbols they have ever seen and are slowly having them all torn down, covered up, scraped off or sealed up. It's like they want to put God in jail.

If you never saw this video, you would never think this possible.

6 comments:

Ogre said...

I want to know how they found out about the thing. Did you see how far out in the middle of nowhere that thing is? It's so obvious that these people are looking for trouble.

K T Cat said...

The third time I watched it, I figured out the device they used to show it - the fast forward of the driving and why they did it.

Stylistically, I think the video does a lot of things well. I liked the voice-over script particularly. The use of the term "our ancestors" is usually reserved for reverent mentions of the American Indians, but this video makes you realize that those same reverent tones apply to our own. And unlike the American Indians, it doesn't take a whole lot of archaeology to find out what they believed in. References to God and religion festoon their songs and literary works.

There's a blog post in all of that.

ArrMatey said...

Cat, thanks for linking this. I appreciate that you took the time to listen to the voice over and such. When I went looking for this cross, I did intentionally film the whole drive there (only a portion is shown in the fast forward version -- the whole thing took long or I'd have to speed it up too much to be visually recognizable) for the purpose of showing people just how far out of the way the cross is.

As to the voiceover, as a former soldier, I honestly do think of the WWI vets who erected the cross as my anscestors. People who share beliefs and experiences and culture are related, and I'm glad you caught what I was trying to relate with that.

As an attorney, I'm just ticked off that such a nonsensically written court opinion results in this, and I think it is o.k. for people to be as offended by these things as the plaintiffs are presumed to be (if you read the court opinion, however, you will find that the plaintiff isn't offended by the cross at all, personally, but just thinks such things shouldn't be allowed).

This has gotten quite a response. Thanks for your help.

--ArrMatey

Anonymous said...

Chilling. That's all I can say.

Unknown said...

well done KT . . . i think i will link your post in my blog . . . .tell arrmatey well done. i don't normally like lawyer types but if that is what he is, i love him for exposing the truth and injustice.

Anonymous said...

If you'd like a little more history on the Mojave Cross, please read my story about it at thesunrunner.com. This is the second ACLU case that has resulted in the degredation or elimination of a historical site in the Mojave Desert.