Ohio Judge Says Ten Commandments Can Stay
Posted on April 19, 2006
I was glad to find this good news on my lunch break.
A Ten Commandments monument that has stood on the courthouse lawn for almost 50 years does not promote religion and can remain in place, a federal judge ruled.
U.S. District Judge James Carr said Tuesday that the monument can stay because the motives for placing it outside the Lucas County courthouse were secular and not an endorsement of a specific belief.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio sued Lucas County in 2002 to have the display removed, saying it was unconstitutional and promoted religion.
The ruling was based on the precedence set by the Supreme Court in an earlier ruling over a monument at the Texas Capitol. The ACLU have yet to decide whether they will appeal.
» Filed Under 1st Amendment, ACLU, Church And State, News
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6 Responses to “Ohio Judge Says Ten Commandments Can Stay”
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I’m OK with five or six of the commandments, but I don’t know how you can call the “god” ones anything but religious in nature. Can’t we compromise and post five of the sensible, secular ones? Everyone wins that way. Considering I’ve broken like seven or eight of the commandments already, seeing five or so of them on courthouse walls could inspire me to behave myself!
Or perhaps it should be the ones you broke that need to be up there the most.
Thank God the ACLU is beginning to find some Judicial resistance. Incidently, is ok for religion to be on public buildings. It is not ok for the State (government) to tell you how or what to worship. The Separation of Church and State interpretation by liberals is a great leap in interpretation of the First Amendment.
*sigh*
The problem with this decision is that it does not uphold the Founders’ framing of the First Amendment. That nearly a generation of judges and justices have perverted the establishment clause is no excuse, in my eyes, for continuing to perpetrate a fraud upon the republic.
The Founders clearly and unequivocally stood behind public religious expressions—even by elected officials—as long as those expressions were not made as the result of a federal government-supported (as in hired, paid for, formally recognized as the official religious arm of the FEDERAL government) religion.
Until the Constitution—including the Bill of rights—is read in its plain sense, as the Framers said they intended it to mean, we are left with abortions like this ruling.
The Founding Fathers lived in simpler times, and we ought not be bound by what we think they would think. Don’t get me wrong, they thunk up a great constitution, but the world has changed so much since then that it’s pretty silly to try to base our decisions on conjecture. There’s flexibility in the Constitution - intentional ambiguities - and we’re better for it.
“The problem with this decision is that it does not uphold the Founders’ framing of the First Amendment.”
Actually, it does, since the Framers endorsed Christianity on almost every level, even those that weren’t Christian. You interpret the establishment clause wrong, unless you are going to assert that every single politician in our nation’s history violated the clause, since every president in our nation’s history had to swear on a Bible publicy (not a Christian practice but a clear endorsement of its authority).