Cross the Line on Nativity Ruling

While it rated only three short columns (“Judge Rules Nativity Scene Violates Constitution,” Times, Jan. 11), the denial of the display of religious symbols on government property is moot.

How can anyone enforce the judgment of the court? Does it include events I have witnessed such as religious theme stamps sold in the post office, religious jewelry worn by athletes playing in a public stadium, bumper stickers on a public street, Bibles on school library shelves, symbols in the windshields of cars entering a national forest, chapels on a military base, religious symbols on the uniform of a military chaplain, solicitors for religious groups on the street in their door-to-door canvasses, religious structures of Indians on reservations, coins with “In God We Trust” when I enter a national park, or priests and nuns doing business in city hall?

Did the federal government endorse Christianity when it stamped a religious symbol into my ID tags? Was it an endorsement to have the Government Printing Office issue a New Testament, which I found during the invasion of Europe?

All the judges with the wisdom of Solomon, half on one side of the issue and half on the opposite side, could not decide this issue to anyone’s satisfaction but their own. And there was only one Solomon, or does Superior Court Judge Harvey A. Schneider consider himself the reincarnation of Solomon?

He has drawn a line which I am willing to step on and cross now, just as I was when challenged in grade school, “I dare you to cross this line.”

DEAN W. TERLINDEN

Long Beach