This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently — and correctly — let stand a legal ruling that prohibits the state-endorsed use of large Christian crosses as memorials on Utah public highways. It is curious but telling that so many Christians interpret these decisions as an attack on religion.

After all, the state of Utah had argued in defense that these very crosses were not religious symbols. (Really.)

Curious but telling, too, is the strikingly different argument championed by the Alliance Defense Fund, the self-defined "Christ-centered" organization that served as co-counsel. ADF argued, and still argues ("High court ignores Utah's crosses," Opinion, Nov. 3), that government can legally use religious symbols like — you guessed it — a roadside cross.

Say what? That's like the defense team for a child rapist arguing that its client didn't have sex with that child, while simultaneously arguing that the union was protected by religious freedom. The contradiction is obvious. Indeed, it factored into the legal decision.

The facts and principles are straightforward. Unfortunately, they've been repeatedly misrepresented and misconstrued. It's time to set the record straight:

• 1. The prohibition against Christian crosses is in no way "disrespectful" to the Utah Highway Patrol troopers. Almost everyone agrees — including American Atheists, which brought the suit — that the troopers should be honored. But state-endorsed memorials should not use poignant religious symbols, especially those that promote one religion over others. Many other government memorials to fallen troopers exist that don't use conspicuous religious symbols, both in the Utah Capitol and in other states. These memorials are not disrespectful.

• 2. The Christian cross is not a universal, secular symbol of death. It is used nearly exclusively by Christians.

• 3. It was no accident that the symbol chosen was not the Jewish Star of David, the Muslim Star and Crescent, or a swastika. A different religious symbol would have been correctly considered unconstitutional too, without subsequent misunderstanding or outcry.

• 4. It's inconsequential that Mormons don't use the Christian cross the same way that (other) Christians do. Mormons don't use the Muslim Crescent either, but it's still a religious symbol.

• 5. Symbols matter. If they didn't, no one would object to changing the symbol now. Many iconic civil rights cases have been sparked by circumstances that were far more symbolic than practical.

• 6. Context and degree matter, too. A painting of Christ on a cross, in a government-owned museum filled with other paintings, is constitutionally permissible. But a 12-foot-tall cross, standing alone on a state highway and emblazoned with the insignia of the Utah Highway Patrol, conveys a fundamentally different — and conspicuously religious — message.

• 7. The rulings were not based on hatred of religion. Most of the Supreme Court justices are Christian.

• 8. The rulings do not diminish religious freedom; instead, they protect it from government interference. People remain free to have crosses on private property, without the official Utah Highway Patrol emblem.

• 9. The United States legal system is not one of simple majority rule. Minorities have rights, too. The Constitution ensures that Evangelicals can't deny Mormons the right to vote — or to be president.

• 10. America is not a Christian nation, despite repeated (typically Christian) claims otherwise. The Constitution is explicit on this point. So, too, is the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli.

In short, the legal rulings were correct. The Christian cross is, and it is seen as, a religious symbol — the very reason that many Christians object so vehemently to its exclusion. Government should not endorse a religion; that principle protects religious freedom rather than diminishes it. And there are other, more appropriate methods for honoring our troopers.

It's the American way.

Gregory A. Clark is an associate professor of bioengineering at the University of Utah and faculty adviser to the student group SHIFT (Secular Humanism, Inquiry and Free Thought). He gratefully acknowledges the influence of many activists and thinkers on this topic. The views expressed are his own.