Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry Source: Pacific Press / Getty
Welp, it has happened. The First Amendment of the American Constitution be damned. Louisiana is officially the first state in U.S. history to require by law that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school in the state from kindergarten through college. Another way of putting that is that Louisiana is the first state to make it against the law not to practice religious indoctrination in the classroom.
According to the Associated Press, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed into law Wednesday the requirement that a poster-sized display of the Ten Commandments in “large, easily readable font” be placed in every single state-funded classroom in the state, and he’s justifying the legislation by lying to the easily lied to and suggesting that the very concept of law was borne through Christianity.
“If you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses” who got the commandments from God,” Landry said.
As we previously reported, the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Dodie Horton, claimed prior to the bill’s passing that the Ten Commandments are rooted in legal history and that plastering them all over every public institution of learning in the state would effectively place a “moral code” in the classroom.
Here’s what I wrote about that:
Get TF outta here with this nonsense about the Ten Commandments being “rooted in legal history,” and about the display being about “moral code” and not explicit religious indoctrination. In fact, let’s just take a quick look at this so-called “code.”
First, it’s not really clear what the practical value is of displaying for students biblical instructions not to kill and steal, as it is common knowledge that these are crimes. I suppose it does somewhat justify the “legal history” aspect, but they might as well require classrooms to display the adage, “Play with fire, you will get burned” since we’re creating entire legally-binding bills just to state the obvious.
But beyond that, what’s the “moral” value of instructing students to “have no other Gods before” the chosen Christian God, to “not make unto thee any graven images,” to “not take the name of Lord thy God in vain,” and to “remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy?” What does any of that have to do with the “moral code” of someone who is not a worshiper of the Christian faith?
The Louisiana GOP could have found sound moral advice from the texts of a myriad of religious and/or spiritual groups, but they chose the doctrine of their preferred religion—America’s most dominant religion—and a list of rules, nearly half of which can’t really be applied to non-Cristians. That’s not about morals, it’s about forced proselytizing in public schools.
The law prevents students from getting an equal education and will keep children who have different beliefs from feeling safe at school, the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation said in a joint statement Wednesday afternoon.
“Even among those who may believe in some version of the Ten Commandments, the particular text that they adhere to can differ by religious denomination or tradition. The government should not be taking sides in this theological debate,” the groups said.
Legal battles over the display of the Ten Commandments in classrooms are not new.
In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a similar Kentucky law was unconstitutional and violated the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says Congress can “make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The high court found that the law had no secular purpose but rather served a plainly religious purpose.
More to come….
It’s worth noting that other red states such as Texas, Oklahoma and Utah—all states where Republicans have argued some variation of “woke ideology indoctrinates students”—have proposed similar bills to require the display of the Ten Commandments. Indoctrination isn’t the problem—it just needs to be the right kind of indoctrination. This is the message GOP hypocrites are sending, and there’s nothing “moral” about that.
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