Monuments around the country have been defaced or destroyed by vandals, and yet you have probably not even heard about these actions. I will get to my second point in a moment, but let’s first talk about what vandals have been doing to religious and political monuments.

You may remember the Supreme Court case a few years ago where the justices ruled that a cross in the desert was constitutional. The cross was first erected in the Mojave Desert back in 1934 by the Veterans of Foreign Wars to honor World War I veterans. The ACLU filed suit arguing that the cross was unconstitutional because it was on government land. Just days after the Supreme Court ruling, vandals stole it. Two years later it showed up hundreds of miles away in Northern California.

At a Vietnam Veteran’s memorial in Coos Bay, Oregon there is a cross that has been the target of the ACLU and the Freedom From Religion Foundation. First, vandals drew a perforation line at the base of the cross with the word “cut” above it and an arrow pointing to the line. In August, someone detonated an improvised explosive device (IED) next to the memorial.

In September, vandals tried to topple an 850-pound, steel-rod enforced monument to the Ten Commandments, which sits in plain view of the U.S. Supreme Court. The monument sits in front of the headquarters of Faith and Action (a Christian outreach ministry). That same month, vandals cut the heads off of statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary outside a New Jersey church. In California, vandals set a fire at the base of a statue of Ronald Regan at the city’s Ronald Reagan Sports Park. The fire damaged the president’s likeness and damaged tiles on what known as the “Can-Do Monument.”

I suspect you are hearing about some of these acts by vandals for the first time. The press seems to be ignoring these actions. Do you think the reaction of the media would be different if a statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. was defaced? I think we know that answer to that question. I’m Kerby Anderson, and that’s my point of view