Thou Shalt Not Make Unto Thee Any Craven Image*
In craven abdication of their legal and moral obligation, Louisiana lawmakers who mandate the display of a distinct religious denomination’s version of the Ten Commandments in all elementary and secondary school classrooms to the exclusion of all others convey nothing short of the state endorsing religion over nonreligion and one religion over all others, in clear violation of the First Amendment Establishment Clause.
Bible peddling Trump, whose understanding of the Ten Commandments is solely in their violation, fully agrees with requiring every public classroom in Louisiana to display a poster of the decalogue. “I LOVE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, PRIVATE SCHOOLS, AND MANY OTHER PLACES, FOR THAT MATTER.”
In his book The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American, Andrew Seidel explains:
“The single most accurate predictor of whether a person voted for Donald trump in the 2016 election was not religion, wealth, education, or even political party; it was believing the United States is and should be a Christian nation. Researchers studied this connection and were able to control for other characteristics to ensure that Christian nationalism was not simply a proxy for other forms of intolerance or other variables related to vote choice. They concluded, ‘The more someone believed the United States is — and should be — a Christian nation, the more likely they were to vote for Trump.’ . . . Christian nationalism is, at least in this sense more important than religion, political party, or any other factor in American life.”
Louisiana wants to start ’em young while they are captive and most impressionable. The state will impose on school children both a religious text and, according to one scholar, a hidden curriculum with the state “evangelizing a particular Christian denomination to them.” “Much of what we learn about the world and our place in it is taught through the hidden curriculum. An example of the hidden curriculum would be which religions have documents and symbols on classroom walls in a given school, which ones do not, and what this tells students of all religions and no religions how their school values their religious background. It will be impossible for students attending public elementary, secondary, and post-secondary institutions to be unaware of the displays hanging in the classrooms with the State government’s endorsement.”
The commands that must be displayed differ from those in the Jewish Ten Commandments and include text that is absent from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. So, Louisiana officially prefers religion over non-religion and a distinct set of Christian beliefs over all others. Oh, and not every public pupil is Protestant or even “Christian, or practices religion.”
It’s a clear attempt to move the country toward Christian nationalism and undermine religious freedom in the United States. The new law is part of Republican-controlled Louisiana’s efforts to help lead the charge to combine government and a conservative Christian worldview. “Politicians in Louisiana ‘are not only passing a series of laws that infuse Christianity into public schools and divert public funds to private religious schools,’ said Rachel Laser, chief executive of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, ‘they’re bragging about their goal of creating a Christian nation.’” Louisiana’s Ten Commandments Law Signals a Broader Christian Agenda.
Louisiana’s passage, which requires a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments prominently posted in every classroom, is the first to succeed in the United States in more than 40 years, although various states have tried. The Supreme Court stuck down Kentucky’s mandate in 1980, holding that the Ten Commandments “are undeniably a sacred text in the Jewish and Christian faiths,” and held that their display in public classrooms violated the First Amendment bar against establishment of religion. The new law requires “a poster or framed document that is at least eleven inches by fourteen inches,” and the commandments must be the “central focus,” and “printed in a large, easily readable font.” La.’s Ten Commandments law will test religion-friendly courts.
The current supermajority of the Supreme Court, unfortunately, is all too willing to cross lines which threaten free exercise by allowing taxpayer dollars to be used to support religion over non-religion and one religion over others. The supermajority is also willing to accommodate people’s use of so-called religious principles and “sincerely held religious beliefs” to violate generally applicable laws and as pretext to discriminate against people who differ from them or with whom they disagree.
Under Supreme Court precedent, this Louisiana law would have zero chance of survival. Even with the conservative supermajority on the current court, it should but may not be a bridge too far in what will, of course, be a split decision. We’ll see. See Justice Alito, please don’t forget the First Amendment.
As a non-believer, I firmly support the First Amendment, including the religion clauses. People have the constitutional right to hold — and to not hold — religious beliefs and to engage — and to not engage — in religious practice, subject to the limitations of generally applicable laws, including laws designed to protect individual civil rights. The government has the obligation to preserve and protect religion and non-religion and religious practice and non-religious practice by doing everything it can to stay out of religion and avoid endorsing any form of religion or practice, especially a combination of religion and government. Any such combination would be hostile to the country’s founding principles, the text and meaning of the Constitution, and the freedom to exercise, or to not exercise, a chosen religion.
As for Louisiana’s religious mandate, the ACLU wasted no time. “The First Amendment promises that we all get to decide for ourselves what religious beliefs, if any, to hold and practice, without pressure from the government. Politicians have no business imposing their preferred religious doctrine on students and families in public schools.” ACLU sues Louisiana over requiring the display of Ten Commandments in public schools.
When it comes to public displays of the Ten Commandments, context often makes the difference. I’m familiar with the law surrounding displays of the Ten Commandments on government property because I represented a city in a fascinating lawsuit involving a Ten Commandments monument the city had prominently situated in the municipal gardens that surrounded its city offices. [That was, of course, before I joined the board of the local ACLU affiliate.]
Back in the early to mid-60s, the Fraternal Order of the Eagles donated stone monuments inscribed with a version of the Ten Commandments to state and local municipalities throughout the country as part of an organized National Youth Guidance Program. In 1966, the city I later represented accepted the gifted monument as an official act of the government. The monument was made of granite, was 32 inches by 60 inches, and was sculpted in the form of two tablets. The tablet read:
The Ten Commandments
I AM the LORD thy God.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven images.
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
Thou shalt not kill.
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Thou shalt not steal.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his cattle, nor anything that is thy neighbors.
I became involved when a self-professed church known as Summum sought to gift the city a stone monument containing its seven “religious” aphorisms. See Notes, below. Summum wanted the city to place the monument etched with its seven tenets in the city’s municipal gardens. While the city appreciated the offer, it rejected the gift. Summum sued the city and sought an order directing the city to accept the gift and place it in the municipal gardens.
There were three First Amendment issues in the case.
The first was whether the city could be compelled to accept a gift of a stone monument on which a self-professed religion’s tenets were displayed as an exercise of free speech under the First Amendment and place it in the city’s municipal gardens. The judge held that for free speech purposes, the municipal gardens was what is known as a non-public forum, the monuments displayed therein were expressions of the city, and the city could not be compelled to accept a monument that did not constitute expressions of the city. The federal district judge agreed with our position that the city’s rejection of Summum’s proffered gift was reasonable.
The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals later reversed the district judge on this point.
The second was whether the city’s display and adoption of the Eagles’ donated Ten Commandments monument while rejecting Summum’s monument violated the First Amendment Establishment Clause. In a detailed analysis, the judge held that the Ten Commandments monument had been gifted by a non-sectarian organization and was “primarily secular in nature.” The judge said:
“We would take a myopic view of history if we denied that our laws did not have early roots with an origin which some believed divine. The fact that various versions of the ‘Ten Commandments’ are thought by some to be of divine origin ought not to deprive those who place emphasis on its secular origins — including the [c]ity . . . — of a chance to have their say. Religious groups do not have an exclusive claim to that code of conduct. It belongs to us all.”
Summum, a sectarian organization, demanded that the city accept and adopt its religious tenets as the city’s own. Rejecting that argument, the judge said:
“In contrast to accepting a non-sectarian gift from a secular group, had the [c]ity . . . accepted and adopted a gift from an admittedly religious organization wishing to promote a sectarian message in the Municipal Gardens, such would easily be seen to be an endorsement of religion and would have violated the Establishment Clause. It would have breached the strong but invisible wall of separation between church and state.”
The third issue was whether the city violated the First Amendment Free Exercise rights by rejecting the gift. The city argued, successfully, that Summum and its followers had no truly held religious belief or practice requiring it to donate monuments to the city to be accepted and placed on public property. The judge said:
“The Court holds that Defendants have not violated Plaintiff’s Free Exercise rights as guaranteed by the First Amendment. Plaintiffs remain free to explore the nature and origins of the universe unhindered by [the c]ity.”
Summum appealed the district court’s decision to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Tenth Circuit agreed with the lower court’s ruling that the city had not violated the First Amendment Establishment Clause by displaying the Ten Commandments monument on its municipal grounds.
But the appeals court reversed the district court on Summum’s First Amendment free speech claim, while reinforcing that the Ten Commandments are “undeniably” religious. The court explained:
“[W]e are persuaded that a reasonable observer would . . note the fact that the lawn of the municipal building contains a diverse array of monuments, some from a secular and some from a sectarian perspective. The secular monuments would include the police officer memorial, the sister city tree, and certain historical monuments. The sectarian monuments would include one from a Judeo–Christian perspective (the Ten Commandments Monument), see Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39, 41 (1980) (“The Ten Commandments are undeniably a sacred text in the Jewish and Christian faiths, and no legislative recitation of a supposed secular purpose can blind us to that fact.”), and one from the perspective of Summum. As the [c]ity . . . itself recognizes: ‘The trend of the [United States Supreme] Court appears to be that greater and more equal accommodation of all ideas (pluralism and diversity), including religious discourse, in public fora does not threaten the private religious freedom the Establishment Clause was meant to protect.’ To the extent to which the . . . [c]ity remains genuinely concerned regarding the likely misapprehensions of passersby, the [c]ity might also post a disclaimer, explaining clearly that private entities are responsible for at least some of the Municipal Grounds’ monuments, including the Ten Commandments Monument and the Seven Principles Monument. . . . Under these circumstances, we cannot conclude that the [c]ity’s display of the Seven Principles Monument would have had the effect of conveying, to a reasonable and reasonably well-informed observer, that the [c]ity . . . was endorsing a particular religion.”
I’ll end where I began: Louisiana lawmakers who mandate the display of a distinct religious denomination’s version of the Ten Commandments in all elementary and secondary school classrooms to the exclusion of all others convey nothing short of the state endorsing religion over nonreligion and one religion over all others, in clear violation of the First Amendment Establishment Clause.
Notes:
The Seven Principles Monument would be inscribed:
“Creation manifests when balance is perfected between the opposites. By applying higher Law against lower laws, the Creation becomes divine.” — Summum
THE GRAND PRINCIPLE OF CREATION
“NOTHING AND POSSIBILITY come in and out of bond infinite times in a finite moment.” — Summum
“The Principles of knowing Creation are Seven; those who know these possess the Magic Key to whose touch all locked doors open to Creation.” — Summum
THE PRINCIPLE OF PSYCHOKINESIS
“SUMMUM is MIND, Thought:
The Universe is a Mental Creation.” — Summum
THE PRINCIPLE OF CORRESPONDENCE
“As above, so below; as below, so above.” — Summum
THE PRINCIPLE OF VIBRATION
“Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates.” — Summum
THE PRINCIPLE OF OPPOSITION
“Everything is Dual; everything has an opposing point; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes bond; all truths are but partial truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.” — Summum
THE PRINCIPLE OF RHYTHM
“Everything flows out and in; everything has its season; all things rise and fall; the pendulum swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.” — Summum
THE PRINCIPLE OF CAUSE AND EFFECT
“Every Cause has its Effect; every Effect has its Cause; everything happens according to Law; Chance is just a name for Law not comprehended; there are many fields of causation but nothing escapes The Law.” — Summum
THE PRINCIPLE OF GENDER
“Gender is in everything; everything has its Masculine and Feminine Principle; Gender manifests on all levels.”
R.VanWagoner https://medium.com/@richardvanwagoner publishes. https://richardvanwagoner.medium.com/subscribe
*My brother the very talented fiction writer and novelist, Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner, deserves considerable credit for offering both substantive and technical suggestions to https://medium.com/@richardvanwagoner. Rob’s second novel, a beautifully written suspense drama that takes place in Utah, Wyoming, and Norway, dropped on November 17, 2020. Available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple Bookstore and your favorite local bookshop, this novel, The Contortionists, which Rob himself narrates for the audio version, is a psychological page-turner about a missing child in a predominantly Mormon community. I have read the novel and listened to the audio version twice. It is a literary masterpiece. The Contortionists is not, however, for the faint of heart.