[img]1|left|Ari Noonan||no_popup[/img]One of my favorite moments beckons:

A test of character looms for peripatetic County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas.

Will he stand up as vociferously for others as he did for his own people several years ago?

The record is clear, but the outcome is not.

[img]1979|right|Mr. Mark Ridley-Thomas||no_popup[/img]When the Supervisors were supervising a realignment of voting districts, based on ethnicity, during his first term, Mr. Ridley-Thomas argued strenuously that it was fair to load certain districts with minority voters. All major cultures should be represented in government, he asserted.

Ten years ago, in a not uncommon flash of chicken-hearted thinking by the Board of Supes, led by Chicken Little himself, Zevvy Yaroslavsky, the fish-spined Supes voted 3 to 2 to delete the cross from the County seal. (Don’t think they didn’t have the ghost of Islam in their minds when they voted.)

In an embryonic century when American oddballs are in the ascendancy, harshly anti-Christian types bullied the Board of Supes into removing the cross from the seal. The preposterous grounds: That the cross’s presence violated the Constitutional principle of separating church and state.

The cross had been in place for 47 years when the I Hate God forces applied their muscle. The swishy Supes, including Mr. Ridley-Thomas’s predecessor, Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, hollered “Right-o, pal,” and the Custer wannabes surrendered.

Time for a Change

Enter the two conservatives on the Board of Supes, Mike Antonovich and Don Knabe. The other day they proposed the cross be restored to the seal. The San Gabriel Mission, which was placed on the County seal when the cross was removed, did not carry a cross at the time. Now it does.

Messrs. Knabe and Antonovich contend the cross should be returned because the present depiction is “artistically and architecturally inaccurate.”

Fine.

With two votes already locked in for correcting 2004’s error, Mr. Ridley-Thomas – the only newcomer on the Board in the last 10 years – is the logical third vote.

Mr. Ridley-Thomas, who represents this neighborhood, told a Los Angeles Titanic reporter, “I have a deep and abiding regard for the sentiment of the religious leadership of our communities.”

For the sentiment?

“I will be paying very close attention to this discussion as it unfolds.”

Mr. Supervisor, this should not be complicated – or even politically difficult. If your territory were limited to the Westside, I would not be shocked by a “no” vote. However, you also represent South Los Angeles, the single most religious dimension of the city.

This should make your cross vote an easy call.

Do you believe a cross belongs on the ubiquitous County seal?

Here is watching.