A thirteen foot tall cross atop a mountain near Camp Horno on the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base in California has become the source of much controversy over the past few weeks, sparked by a Los Angeles Times article about a group of Marines erecting the cross on Veterans Day...

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The cross is the destination of many mandatory training hikes, forcing countless Marines of all religions and no religion not only to visit it, but to participate in the rituals that have grown up around it and to listen, often in formation, to Christian prayers and sermons delivered by their superiors.

This completely inappropriate and unconstitutional practice has been going on since the original cross was erected in 2003, and has been well documented in articles on the official Marine Corps website, such as this one from 2005, and this one from 2006.

To fully grasp what occurs during these mandatory hikes, just watch this video from one that took place in 2008.

That's not a chaplain delivering that Christian sermon (beginning at 3:36 in the video); that was the battalion's sergeant major, Jeffrey D. Moses, and the Marine speaking right before him was the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Benjamin T. Watson. Get that? The superiors that a non-Christian or non-religious Marine should be able to go to when they have an issue with being forced to participate in religious exercises are the ones who are leading these forced religious exercises. Is it any wonder that so many service members say that they can't go to their chains of command to resolve these issues and instead come to organizations like the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF)?

[note: emphasis mine - BruceW]

In her story, Rodda details several common myths perpetrated by Christians attempting to present controversy over the Camp Pendleton Cross as a symbol of Christian "persecution" -  read the full story here.