Idiot Crusaders

Because the areas surrounding Las Cruces, New Mexico, don't have laws preventing crusading idiots from moving into them, ... crusading idiots occasionally move into them. "Las Cruces" is Spanish for "The Crosses"; the city has been around since at least 1848 and some authorities claim that the name derives from grave markers. It lies along the Onate trail, blazed by crusader Don Juan de Onate starting in 1598.

In a completely unrelated story, I'm sure, a certain Paul Weinbaum moved into the area near Las Cruces and decided that he didn't like the city logo, which depicts three crosses. Since he doesn't actually live in the city, he had to sue on behalf of his daughter, and Martin Boyd, who do live in the city. He also felt it necessary to sue the state government, whose transgression was to use the logo on highway overpasses. Apparently, "The crosses serve no governmental purpose other than to disenfranchise and discredit non-Christian citizens." It has not been revealed in what way they have been prevented from voting or otherwise been denied access to anything, ever, by the logo. According to one story in the paper, Paul's daughter was offended at having to sign school papers with a "religious" logo on them. Hmmm ... he's suing on behalf of his sensitively atheist daughter who doesn't live with him? Sounds familiar. He is ... ahem,... they are suing on both constitutional grounds and under the 1964 Civil Rights Act because prospective employees would have to sign a form with a "religious" symbol.

The 1st Amendment of the Constitution reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Since Congress does not pick the City's logo, that doesn't apply and we can move on. The only relevant facts are whether or not the plaintiffs are actually "disenfranchised or discredited", and whether the logo is religious in nature.

Clearly, it is not Mr. Weinbaum's daughter who is offended: Mr. Weinbaum reveals himself to be among the easily offended, and not coincidentally, obsessed, bored, unreasonable, uninformed, an, well, I'm not a psychiatrist, so I'll stop there. Paul, who seems to be among only four people (himself, Martin Boyd, Jesse Chavez (president of an Association formed to file these nuisance necessary lawsuits, and we'll grant him his daughter) who gives a rodent's hindquarters about this (well, until recently, when a local radio station started a "Keep the Crosses" campaign and has since given away hundreds of bumper stickers, and a survey by the local paper was 108-0 against the lawsuit) says that he has protested to the Patent office and written "literally hundreds" of letters to protest the logo. After pestering the city officials this way, he has the nerve to call them the "City Belligerent" (a play on Santa Fe's "City Different"). He claims that he wants the money reimbursed (to taxpayers!) for the building of the logo on a sports stadium, and he wants it removed from everything the city owns. Obviously (to him), removing the logo from every police car, firetruck, building, and form is not going to cost the taxpayers anything because government labor is free. The thousands of man-hours he has personally devoted to this cause that could have been used to do productive things is the only possible meaning of thte "disenfranchisement" claimed in his lawsuit. As for the "discredit", one only needs to read his own words to see how much discredit could be heaped upon him.

So now that I've established that he can't read the Constitution, doesn't understand opportunity or labor costs, and that the only thing disenfranchising or discrediting him is his own obsession with something about which he is patently wrong, we only need to examine whether or not the logo is actually religious in nature. And we got the answer this morning in this letter to the editor of the Las Cruces Sun-News:

In keeping up with the city of Las Cruces' logo controversy, I feel ready to address the issue of the logo's origins.

The early '70s are still a blur as I try to recall how the logo came to be the city's. I was working for the city purchasing department and attending NMSU as an advertising art major.

A city department director had approached me about designing something that our welding shop could make as a wall plaque for the council chambers. I drew up the original design, a design that was changed slightly from what I had done.

If anyone remembers me from back then, I'm the same long-haired, no religion, Black Sabbath music lover, hung-over pot smoking, Playboy reading, Harley riding hippie that drew it up. "Religious symbol" was so far from my mind it had no bearing on the design whatsoever. I love this city today as I did then and yes, I've cleaned up nicely and grown up quite a bit. [emphasis added]

Guess what, the logo still has no religious symbolism to me today. It is the name of our city. We could change our name to what the truckers call it as they come down Interstate 10, but even some one with a vivid imagination would be hard pressed to design a "Stink City" logo.

We know the city's name came from crosses marking the graves of individuals killed during their travels. A cross was quick, easy to make for marking a grave then and getting back to traveling. If things and times were safer then, maybe tombstones could have been put there instead, but there is already a Tombstone so "Las Cruces" it is. To those suing, go away peacefully and leave our city alone.

RAYMOND GARCIA

Thanks, Raymond, for a very funny letter and absolutely conclusive evidence that the logo is areligious. It was designed to be easy to fabricate out of metal, full stop. Now maybe Mr. Weinbaum can move to Santa Fe, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, San Diego, San Antonio, or any of a number of other places whose historic names reflect the fact that the Spaniards who conquered this territory used their personal belief system as moral cover for unreasonable and unconscionable political actions.

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