Tear down that wall!

Religious Liberty | Faith-based law firms gain clout and a milestone: 25 years of battling misperceptions about a constitutional “wall of separation” between secular and religious life | Lynn Vincent

SAN DIEGO — From atop Mt. Soledad, visitors on clear Southern California days look out at the horizon and marvel at how the Pacific Ocean meets the sky in a seamless blue kiss. But for church-state separationists the charm ends there: They find offensive the 43-foot Latin cross that rises from the center of Mt. Soledad's publicly owned peak. For 17 years, ACLU-backed attorney James McElroy and the City of San Diego have debated in court whether the cross is part of a war memorial that should be preserved or a state-established "Easter Cross" that should be torn down.

Those advocating destruction might have had their way not too long ago. But Christian religious-liberty legal groups have changed that. In 2004, the Ann Arbor-based Thomas More Law Center learned that San Diego officials were on the verge of settling the marathon case and offered to intervene.