So there is this whole big thing about the Ten Commandments Monument in the Alabama Supreme Court building … and rightly so.
Starting with the facts, Alabama Supreme Court Chief
Justice Roy Moore, aka the “Ten Commandments Judge” (as he called himself during his 2000 Supreme Court Justice campaign), placed a two-and-a-half ton granite monument displaying the Ten Commandments inside the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court Building after
business hours on July 31, 2001.
Three Lawyers from Alabama took suit against the chief justice for ignoring the First Amendment.
Last year Federal District Judge Myron Thompson ruled that the monument did violate the separation of church and state outlined in the Constitution and ordered Moore to take it down.
Moore appealed, and the monument sat still.
On Aug. 19 of this year, the 11th Federal District Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled in favor of Thompson’s prior ruling to remove the Ten Commandments from the rotunda.
Still the monument sat.
It wasn’t until Moore’s associate justices suspended him on ethics charges, that the massive rock was moved into a closet opposite an employee cafeteria last Wednesday.
Moore plans to take this to the U.S. Supreme Court, but for now the monument is under lock and key.
The 700 Club must eat this up!
This whole thing has turned into a debate over God, instead of just a question of law.
I am all for them taking that monument out of the rotunda of a judicial building. It belongs in a church, not in a courtroom.
Didn’t we cover this about 200 years ago?
I just wonder what would have happened … what would we have done if it was a statue of Buddha instead of the Ten Commandments?
First of all, Charlton Heston wouldn’t have gotten any royalties, and secondly America would have panicked.
After all, America was founded on Christianity. Maybe so, but Nazi Germany comes to mind as well.
It is not a matter of shutting God out. It’s just a matter of keeping God where he belongs – in the hearts and homes of Christians, not the walls of government.
It’s a tough pill to swallow so grab a glass of water.
What we don’t always realize is that not everyone believes the same things as everyone else, and just as you wouldn’t want someone rubbing their beliefs in your face, they don’t want you to do it either.
True, that monument might not have been yelling “fornicator, you’re going to hell” at everyone who passed by (most unlike the evangelist in Free Speech Alley), but it did shove the Ten Commandments in everyone’s face … about 5,400 pounds of Ten Commandments to be exact.
Also true, the Ten Commandments are some pretty good rules to follow, but the tablets are still undeniably Christian, which makes them religious in nature, which makes them constitutionally unfit for the rotunda of a government building.
So put down your candles, God didn’t go anywhere.
He or she is not locked away in some broom closet – that’s a piece of granite, not the almighty.
Like smoking cigarettes in government buildings before it, this is just another victim of freedom.
Religious freedom isn’t just the right to practice and believe any religion you want. It is also the right to be free from the practice of other religions.
It seems to me a state Supreme Court Chief Justice would understand that.
Then again it is Alabama, and they never have really been on the cutting edge.
But if you just can’t handle the idea of God being locked in a closet, maybe they can wheel the stone out to the orange square of concrete in the back of the parking lot and give all us exiled smokers something to lean on.
You can make the hike as well, bum a smoke and join the rest of us who make personal concessions in the name of freedom.