10 Commandment Displays Under Fire, Again

High Court Mulls 10 Commandments Displays
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
STORIES
BACKGROUND
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Court to Decide on Religious Monument
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Rehnquist to Miss High Court's Opening
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9th Circuit Court Sued Over Ten Commandments
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First Lady to Skip Inaugural Tea With '10 Commandments' Judge
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Judge's Robe Bears Ten Commandments
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White House Backs Ten Commandments Display
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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court (search) is considering whether Ten Commandments (search) displays on government property unconstitutionally entangle church and state, a cultural battle that has splintered lower courts for more than two decades.
Justices were hearing arguments Wednesday in two cases involving displays in Texas and Kentucky. It is the first time since 1980 the high court is tackling the emotional issue, in a courtroom boasting a wall carving of Moses holding the sacred tablets.
Ten Commandments monuments are common in town squares, courthouses and other government-owned land around the country. At issue is whether they violate the First Amendment (search) ban on any law "respecting an establishment of religion," or simply represent a secular tribute to America's legal heritage.
The question has sparked dozens of heated legal battles, including one in Alabama by Roy Moore. He lost his job as chief justice a year ago after defying a federal order to remove a 5,300-pound Ten Commandments monument he had installed in the state courthouse.
Demonstrators gathered in front of the Supreme Court in the icy cold Tuesday night for a candlelight vigil, and rallies were expected Wednesday morning. More than 50 groups have filed "friend-of-the-court" briefs weighing in on the issue.
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While the cases strictly involve Ten Commandments displays, a broad ruling could define the proper place of religion in public life — from use of religious music in a school concert to students' recitation of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. A decision is expected by late June.
The Bush administration, which sided with a California school district last year to keep "God" in the Pledge, is now joining Texas and Kentucky officials to back the Ten Commandments displays.
"Countless monuments, medallions, plaques, sculptures, seals, frescoes, and friezes — including, of course, the Supreme Court's own courtroom frieze — commemorate the Decalogue. Nothing in the Constitution requires these historic artifacts to be chiseled away or erased," writes Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott in his court filing.
Erwin Chemerinsky, representing a homeless man suing to have the Texas display removed, countered: "The government's symbolic endorsement of religion is most obvious from the content of the monument itself. In large letters, the monument proclaims 'I AM the LORD thy God.'"
Ten Commandments displays are supported by a majority of Americans, according to an AP-Ipsos poll. The poll taken in late February found that 76 percent support it and 23 percent oppose it.
In the Texas case, Thomas Van Orden lost his lawsuit to have a 6-foot granite monument removed from the state Capitol grounds.
The Fraternal Order of Eagles donated the exhibit to the state in 1961, and it was installed about 75 feet from the Capitol in Austin. The group gave thousands of similar monuments to American towns during the 1950s and '60s, and those have been the subject of multiple court fights.
Two Kentucky counties, meanwhile, hung framed copies of the Ten Commandments in their courthouses and added other documents, such as the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence, after the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the display.
While one lower court found the Texas display to be predominantly nonreligious because it was one of 17 monuments in a 22-acre park, another court struck down the Kentucky displays as lacking a "secular purpose." Kentucky's modification of the display was a "sham" for the religious intent behind it, the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled.
The last time the Supreme Court weighed in on the issue was 1980, when it struck down a Kentucky law requiring Ten Commandments displays in public classrooms. Since then, more than two dozen courts have ruled in conflicting ways on displays in various public contexts.
Justices have outlined several different tests in recent years to determine their constitutionality:
_secular purpose; was there religious motive?
_endorsement; do they show a government neutrality toward religion?
_coercion; do they place impermissible pressure, such as school prayer?
_historical practice; are they part of the "fabric of our society," such as legislative prayer?
The Supreme Court frieze, for instance, depicts Moses and the tablets as well as 17 other figures including Hammurabi, Confucius, Napoleon and Chief Justice John Marshall. Because it includes secular figures in a way that doesn't endorse religion, the display would be constitutional, Justice John Paul Stevens suggested in a 1989 ruling.
The cases are Van Orden v. Perry, 03-1500, and McCreary County v. ACLU, 03-1693.


Question: When are these idiots in the Anti-American Communist Liberal Union going to stop trying to knock out the foundation of our country? And, if they keep failing, will they take the hint and flee to Europe?

Link to article: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,149162,00.html