792
Opinion of Souter, J.
forum by religious displays and religious speakers. By allowing government to encourage what it cannot do on its own, the proposed per se rule would tempt a public body to contract out its establishment of religion, by encouraging the private enterprise of the religious to exhibit what the government could not display itself.
Something of the sort, in fact, may have happened here. Immediately after the District Court issued the injunction ordering petitioners to grant the Klan's permit, a local church council applied for a permit, apparently for the purpose of overwhelming the Klan's cross with other crosses. The council proposed to invite all local churches to erect crosses, and the Board granted "blanket permission" for "all churches friendly to or affiliated with" the council to do so. See Brief in Opposition RA24-RA26. The end result was that a part of the square was strewn with crosses, see Appendices A and B to this opinion, infra, at 795-796, and while the effect in this case may have provided more embarrassment than suspicion of endorsement, the opportunity for the latter is clear.
III
As for the specifics of this case, one must admit that a number of facts known to the Board, or reasonably anticipated, weighed in favor of upholding its denial of the permit. For example, the Latin cross the Klan sought to erect is the principal symbol of Christianity around the world, and display of the cross alone could not reasonably be taken to have any secular point. It was displayed immediately in front of the Ohio Statehouse, with the government's flags flying nearby, and the government's statues close at hand. For much of the time the cross was supposed to stand on the square, it would have been the only private display on the public plot (the menorah's permit expired several days before the cross actually went up). See Pet. for Cert. A15-A16, A31; 30 F. 3d, at 677. There was nothing else on the state-
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