Friday, August 12, 2011

Lawsuit targets the ‘World Trade Center cross’






A misguided lawsuit targets the ‘World Trade Center cross’


SEARCHING FOR survivors amid the rubble that was the World Trade Center, workers 10 years ago unearthed two steel beams joined together at right angles. The 17-foot cross — to some, a sign of comfort and faith in the most nightmarish of times — became part of the story of New York City’s recovery from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. To omit it from the National September 11 Memorial and Museum — as a misguided lawsuit seeks to do — is tantamount to ripping out a page of history.

The American Atheists, a New Jersey-based nonprofit, filed suit last month in New York’s Supreme Court in Manhattan seeking to bar the “World Trade Center cross” from going on display when the Ground Zero museum opens in September. The lawsuit, which names multiple defendants, including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the World Trade Center Foundation, contends that inclusion of the cross violates the U.S. Constitution and New York civil rights law. It argues that the cross, a symbol of Christianity, has no place in a museum that is on government property and receives some government support, though it is run by a private foundation....


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