The Supremes have turned down (without comment) an appeal by Kentucky of an appeals court ruling which forbade erecting a Ten Commandments monument on the state capitol grounds.
The governor in 2000 signed into law a resolution adopted by the state legislature that required placement of the monument, which is more than six feet tall and almost four feet wide, outside the Capitol.
At the top of the monument are the words, “I AM the LORD thy God” followed by the commandments, a sacred and religious text for Jews and Christians. At the bottom are two small Stars of David and a symbol representing Christ.
The monument was given to the state in 1971 by the Fraternal Order of Eagles group. It was displayed until 1980, when it was removed to make room for construction. It has remained in storage since then.
I somehow think the piety of individual Christians and Jews in Kentucky will survive the loss.
It looks to me (reading between the lines) that the 2000 law was meant to be an end run around Establishment Clause issues.
Kentucky Attorney General Albert Chandler appealed to the Supreme Court. He said the 2000 law required an overall public display of historic documents that included the Ten Commandments, a religious symbol.
He said the display was proposed under the law, but it had not yet been designed or installed. He said the appeals court should not have made a constitutional decision based on “speculation and conjecture” over the display’s appearance.
Which is an odd comment, since it sounds like there already was such a display, but that it had been taken down for construction.
I don’t think the Decalogue-as-historical-foundation argument holds up very well, but since the Supreme rejected the appeal without comment, we’ll have to wait for a better test case to see what they think.
While I’m opposed to erecting new Decalogue monuments (what I’d call Reactionary Religious Architecture), I’m much more of a mixed mind when it comes to existing monuments and the like. At some point (probably a much more nebulous point than the courts would like), such things take on an historical interest of their own. Knowing that people in the Seventeenth, Eighteenth, Nineteenth, even Twentieth Centuries had certain beliefs or perspectives, even when those show a different sensitivity or sense of the Constitution than what we have today, is valuable. Sandblasting the word God from every public monument, for example, would be closely akin to the Taliban blowing up ancient stone Buddhas.
Still, new attempts to overtly or covertly spray “I AM the LORD thy God” into the public forum deserve to be challenged.
I’ll be interested in seeing the perspective of some of the legal minds of the Blogosphere over the next several hours.
(via Rich)
I take from the without comment reaction as a complete repudiation of the decologue as historical foundation theory. If any of the conservatives wanted to take this one on, they would have taken the case. Antonin Scalia doesn’t stike me as a timid wallflower when it comes to the culture wars.
As for existing historical monuments, the state interest of historic preservation can be invoked bypassing all the nasty constitutional issues. Nevertheless, preserving the religious heritage of this country has, in my opinion, been very effectively done on the Internet. You can find all sorts of first source materials and don’t need to trudge to the country court house. Even if all the Ten Commandment plaques are removed from the public square, I could find several dozen copies of Exodus 20 in my house alone.
But it wouldn’t be the same (even if there were pictures) as the marble Decalogue monument that was carved by a returned Civil War soldier in 1887 and which serves as his tombstone on the courthouse lawn.
Religious heritage (that’s the term I was looking for, thanks) is a part of our heritage. Heritage doesn’t trump everything, even today, but it also doesn’t mean that, for the sake of diversity, we should change the Mt Rushmore momument to include an Asian woman, a Native American, and a person of African descent.
I don’t have a problem with the National Park Service helping preserve and protect Native American religious sites of historic / archaeological / anthropoligical value; on the other hand, I would have a problem with their building a particularly sectarian modern church that would be used by contemporary worshippers.