798
Stevens, J., dissenting
More knowledgeable observers might regard it, given the context, as an antisemitic symbol of bigotry and disrespect for a particular religious sect. Under the first interpretation, the cross is plainly a religious symbol.3 Under the second, an icon of intolerance expressing an anticlerical message should also be treated as a religious symbol because the Establishment Clause must prohibit official sponsorship of irreligious as well as religious messages. See Wallace v. Jaf-free, 472 U. S. 38, 52 (1985). This principle is no less binding if the antireligious message is also a bigoted message. See United States v. Ballard, 322 U. S. 78, 86-89 (1944) (government lacks power to judge truth of religious beliefs); Watson v. Jones, 13 Wall. 679, 728 (1872) ("The law knows no heresy, and is committed to the support of no dogma, the establishment of no sect").
Thus, while this unattended, freestanding wooden cross was unquestionably a religious symbol, observers may well have received completely different messages from that symbol. Some might have perceived it as a message of love, others as a message of hate, still others as a message of exclusion—a statehouse sign calling powerfully to mind their outsider status. In any event, it was a message that the State of Ohio may not communicate to its citizens without violating the Establishment Clause.
3 Indeed, the Latin cross is identifiable as a symbol of a particular religion, that of Christianity; and, further, as a symbol of particular denominations within Christianity. See American Civil Liberties Union v. St. Charles, 794 F. 2d 265, 271 (CA7 1986) ("Such a display is not only religious but also sectarian. This is not just because some religious Americans are not Christians. Some Protestant sects still do not display the cross . . . . The Greek Orthodox church uses as its symbol the Greek (equilateral) cross, not the Latin cross. . . . [T]he more sectarian the display, the closer it is to the original targets of the [establishment] clause, so the more strictly is the clause applied").
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