A federal court ruled yesterday that a Ten Commandments monument on public property in
Americans United brought this case on behalf of a local resident a few years ago. We thought it was pretty obvious that a six-foot-tall stone monument listing the Ten Commandments from the Old Testament would be seen as sending a religious message.
Not so, said the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court found that the monument, which sits near an old city hall building, did not have a solely religious purpose, noting that religious services have not been held near it.
“Nothing about the setting is conducive to genuflection,” wrote Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw for the unanimous three-judge panel.
Wardlaw went on to point out that the monument is not lighted at night, and that there is no place to sit near it. Furthermore, it is surrounded by trees that make it hard to see from a distance.
Lastly, Wardlaw stated, no one had complained about the monument for 30 years, so it must be OK, right?
We’ve come to quite a pass when a federal appeals court has to drag irrelevant issues like this into an opinion in a desperate attempt to give its blessing to a public display of what everybody knows is a religious code.
Let’s say the trees near the monument were cut down. Let’s say the city put a bench nearby. Maybe some members of a local church might start holding prayer sessions there. What if the city added some illumination? Would the monument then be unconstitutional?
The constitutionality of a display like this should be determined by the message it sends to the people. And the message this display sends is simple: “Our laws are based on this religious code. If you agree with that, great. If you don’t, you’re a second-class citizen.” (It is equally frustrating because our laws aren’t based on the Ten Commandments. The First Amendment makes it impossible for you to be punished for worshipping a “false god” or for making graven images.)
The only question under consideration in a case like this should be, “Is the government endorsing religion?” If so, the monument must go. What type of vegetation, light bulbs and seats surround the monument should not even be a part of the discussion.
The fact that no one complained about the monument until recently is also irrelevant. Constitutional violations do not get grandfathered in simply because of the passage of time. It’s quite possible that many people were bothered by this monument when it was erected in 1959 but were reluctant to speak up. Even today, people who challenge religious displays at the seat of government are often harassed or threatened. The possibility of that happening in the ‘50s was even greater.
In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on two cases dealing with Commandments displays. In one of them, a court majority conjured up some bogus reasons why an old display in
© 1947 - 2008