This should be an easy case. After all, the Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that classroom displays of the Ten Commandments were unconstitutional. Since children are legally required to attend school, they will be captive to the state’s promotion of a particular passage from a particular holy book.
State Rep. Dodie Horton (R), who introduced the bill, admitted as much in the House debate. “I’m not concerned with an atheist, I’m not concerned with a Muslim,” she said, “I’m concerned with our children looking and seeing what God’s law is.”
Smells like establishment of religion to me. But the Louisiana law is sneaky. It pretends the Ten Commandments, the first four of which prescribe whom and how to worship, has nothing at all to do with religion. No, it’s just one of “certain historical documents” — you know, like the Mayflower Compact! After all, James Madison said something about the Ten Commandments once … And, furthermore, Louisiana schoolchildren used to learn about it, so that’s part of history too.
For the historical education of the students of Louisiana, therefore, every classroom is legally required to post one particular version of the Ten Commandments along with four paragraphs of “context” titled “The History of the Ten Commandments in American Public Education.”
Oh — and they can put up the Mayflower Compact too, if they want. Whatevs.
Federal judges might well see through this “Ten Commandments as an American historical document” ploy. But if the case gets to the Supreme Court, it’s not hard to imagine conservative justices gratefully embracing the sham reasoning in their continuing effort to turn our secular nation into a conservative Christian one.
In the meantime, I suggest Louisiana schoolteachers note that nothing in the law prevents them from putting other documents on the wall around the Ten Commandments.
After all, Act 676 aims to educate Louisiana students and put U.S. history in context. Right?
I suggest some (actual) documents from the colonial era, such as the Maryland Act of Toleration, which protected the “free exercise” of a range of Christian denominations; the Providence Agreement, whose signatories pointedly promised to subject themselves to majority rule “only in civil things”; and the pioneering Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Heck, why not throw the Bill of Rights up there too? Students will be fascinated by the First Amendment.
If teachers feel the spirit of the law leans more toward providing students with rules to live by — after all, Horton did say, “It’s so important that our children learn what God says is right and what he says is wrong” — there are plenty of other ethical codes to read along with the Decalogue. How about the Analects of Confucius or the Ten Precepts of Taoism or — to save wall space — the three Delphic maxims that were carved into the Temple of Apollo?
Rep. Candace Newell (D) suggested the 42 Laws of Ma’at (from the Egyptian Book of the Dead), which was a precursor to the Ten Commandments. So were the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi and the Sumerian Code of Ur-Nammu, both of which prohibited murder, theft and lying about one’s neighbor about a millennium before the Book of Exodus. Excellent historical context, I’d say.
All that verbiage could be a bit much for the elementary school set, though. It’s bad enough they have to learn about adultery and wonder what a “manservant” and “maidservant” are (hint: enslaved people).
Perhaps some wisdom from more recent fictional characters like Yoda (“Do or do not. There is no try”) or Dory (“Just keep swimming”) would make a kid-friendlier commandment wall.
Even better, the children themselves could decide on 10 good rules for how people should behave. What a thought-provoking display that would be!
I know, I know. Despite the law’s disingenuous wording, its sponsors may not approve of placing the Ten Commandments in a context that suggests it shouldn’t be posted in public school at all — or that a third-grade class could come up with a better list. They might even take offense.
To them I would respond as Louisiana Rep. Lauren Ventrella (R) responded when CNN’s Boris Sanchez asked her, “What do you say to parents of students — or even teachers — who don’t share your religious views?”
“Don’t look at it.”
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