High Court nixes Ten Commandments case (AP):
The court did not comment in refusing to hear an appeal from Indiana Gov. Frank O'Bannon, who wanted to erect a 7-foot stone monument on the statehouse grounds in Indianapolis. O'Bannon said the Ten Commandments represent tenets of American law as much as religious teachings.
This comes up every once in a while, and this argument sounds just as absurd every time. While it is true that at least
some of the Ten Commandments represent tenets of American law, at least half of them do not. Four of them are explicitly religious in nature, being requirements established by YHWH of his followers:
- You shall have no other gods besides YHWH,
- You shall not make idols,
- You shall not take the name of God in vain, and
- Remember the Sabbath
None of these have any bearing in American law. That much is fairly well supported through years of legal tradition and interpretation of the first amendment to the Constitution: "Congress shall make
no law respecting an establishment of religion." The framers were unequivocal in their intention that the state and religion remain strictly separated. President Thomas Jefferson stated the position eloquently in
his 1801 response to a letter of concern from the Danbury Baptists Association (Connecticut):
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State.
Three of the commandments are probably good ideas, but have little relevance in a modern legal context:
- Honor your father and your mother,
- You shall not commit adultery, and
- You shall not covet your neighbor's posessions
A philosophy contrary to #10 seems integral to the machinery of capitalism which, I am sure, few of those advocating state-sponsored monumentification of the commandments would be willing to denounce.
Number 9 ("You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor") has legal weight in certain cases, but not others. It's illegal to perjure oneself, and slander and libel are actionable, but American law says nothing about day-to-day discourse and the truthfulness thereof.
Finally, there are:
- You shall not kill (commonly, conveniently interpreted as "Thou shalt not murder"), and
- You shall not steal
These are unquestionably part of the American legal system, but is their derivation from the Ten Commandments so direct? The ideas are not unique to Judaism or Christianity, and find themselves in nearly every culture's laws and rules. While it is true that the United States was founded by English Christians and that their religious customs influenced their perception of church, state, and society, there are several centuries of philosophy, law, and government in between Moses and Thomas Jefferson. The framers were far more influenced, at least in terms of their construction of the United States, by Enlightenment thinkers than they were by Biblical figures. If the proponents wish to assert that the precepts condemning murder and theft are derived exclusively or even primarily from the Bible, they must somehow account for their presence in the legal traditions of governments and cultures for whom the Bible is not any more fundamental than the Koran, Bhagavad Gita, et al. are to our own.
If Ten Commandments pushers were as interested in the cultural history of our legal and political system as they insist they are, we'd see them advocating the writings of Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Hume, Kant, and Jefferson. Moses isn't even on the "long list" of those who truly influenced our legal tradition and system of government. As a cultural reference point, the Ten Commandments are important, but they don't belong on the statehouse grounds of any state that is part of the United States, a country that is at least nominally committed to secular government, and equal treatment of citizens regardless of their religious persuasion.
It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court decided to avoid the case, because there is still much confusion over this point. Well-meaning religiously blinded folks have been pushing this issue for years. We get the point: you love your God and you want everyone else to love him too. That's fine and dandy, but we live in a country where such insistence is limited to the citizens and restricted from the powers of government. Deal with it.
