I don't think WT is being singled out. I think there is a movement now in response to religious displays of any kind. I think we are beginning to see it come to fruition not just because of icons being removed and certain religious garb being banned, but also in the "inter-faith" movements.
Jan. 2009
Parents win fight to remove class crucifix
Graham Keeley ("The Times", January 16, 2009)
Barcelona, Spain - The ongoing row between the Catholic Church and the Spanish Government has erupted again after a judge banned the crucifix from a primary school.
The ruling came after parents won a three-year legal battle with the local authorities over a crucifix in Macias Picavea school in Valladolid, northern Spain.
The Valladolid Cultural Association for Lay Schools argued that crucifixes infringed the 1978 Constitution, which establishes Spain as a non-denominational state but recognises individual religious rights.
Judge Alejandro Valentín Sastre ruled that “the presence of religious symbols such as a crucifix is an element of aggression which infringes rights and freedoms”.
The courtroom victory came late last year and has reignited a debate about the place of religious symbols in what was once one of Europe's most devoutly Catholic countries. Ten years of one of the fastest rising rates of immigration on the Continent has increased the number of Muslims, Protestants and other religions in Spain.
And amid discontentment with the right-wing stance of Catholic hierarchy in Spain, many people are leaving the Church.
Fernando Pastor, 47, whose six-year-old daughter attends the school, led the secular campaign. “What stunned me was not so much that the cross was nailed to a wall but that it was at the head of a public educational activity which was not confessional,” Mr Pastor said.
The Episcopal Conference, the ruling body of the Roman Catholic Church, condemned the ruling. Archbishop Carlos Amigo, the Cardinal of Seville, said: “The most important thing is to educate the children to respect religious symbols of all types.”
The Catholic Confederation of School Parents said that the ruling was symptomatic of a “campaign of rabid secularism against religious symbols”.
The crucifix has been banned in several places in the name of separation of Church and State and pluralism. Many religions and philosophies, such as some branches of Protestantism, Islam, Judaism and Secularism are thought to have a particular distaste for crucifixes. Accusations range from anti-pluralism to calling it idolatry, even though Catholic Christians and others who used the crucifix in religious rites do not worship the image itself.
In 2005, a mother accused her daughter's school of discriminating against Christians after the teenager was suspended for refusing to take off a crucifix necklace. [4]
British Airways has faced legal action and calls for a boycott by Christians after it ruled an employee could not display a crucifix the size of a five pence piece on her necklace. [5] A British prison ordered a multi-faith chapel to remove all crucifixes, presumably in order to not offend Muslims. [6]
In Spain, a local judge to order all crucifixes removed from public schools in order to settle a decades-old row over whether crucifixes should be displayed in public buildings in a non-confessional state. [7]
A 2008 Quebec government report recommended that the crucifix of the National Assembly be removed in order to achieve greater pluralism, but the local Liberal party refused to. [8]