A cross we must all bear

The Kreuzpflicht has now become the law of my adopted home state, requiring crosses to be on display in all public buildings. As an avowed atheist (there's enough trouble in the world already without having to come up with supernatural trouble) and constitutionalist, this troubles me greatly. But what can one do? It's the law, right? Here are some ways you can stay within the law and help avoid enforced religion.

As a private person, your options are limited:

- Take the cross off its hook and leave it on a table. Or under a table. Under a chair. In a remote corner. As long as you don't take it with you, it's not theft.
- Bring an extra hook and mount it on the bottom of the cross.
- Hang other religious symbols near the cross. Sticky-tack is nice for quick mounting.

As someone in charge of a public building, the possibilities are nigh endless:

- Hang the cross in the company of other religious symbols. For agnostics, add a question mark, for atheists the empty set symbol (∅). If you want to get advanced, scale each of them according to the respective population groups in Bavaria - or in the World. A nice compact form is a word cloud.
- Hang the cross from the bottom, as Darren Cullen helpfully suggests.
- Hang the cross where it's not readily visible - behind a normally open door, on the side of a book case, underneath a chair.
- Hang the cross as part of an art installation - maybe a set of variously-shaped blocks?
- Pick an unusual cross - why not a nice Cross of Lorraine (☨) which goes nicely with quiche, or an anchored cross for Bavaria's close relation to the sea? Just try to avoid crosses that have four-way rotational symmetry.
- Be aesthetic and paint the cross so it matches the color of the wall - exactly.
- Be sloppy and don't care when the cross falls down. You have a job to do, after all, and "cross-reattacher" is probably not part of your job description.
- Do a modern art installation where the cross is of a short-lived material. Be considerate of your employees and clients, though, and avoid things that make a mess or a smell. Unless you really want to make a point of it, of course.
- Use a more colorful cross. As in, really colorful. One part rainbow colored, the other neon pink. With glitter and bright feathers for good measure.

Hopefully the anti-constitutionality of this will soon be affirmed, since there is precedent from 1995
that this violates the freedom of religion. Until then, we will have to do what we can, shake our heads at this massive waste of time and money, and get ready to vote in the next elections. Maybe by then I'll have dual citizenship and actually get a say in how the country is run.

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