Spoiler alert – the short answer is “yes”.
Here now is the longer answer that not only explains why, by not just having a pop at the ten commandments as a concept, but also digs into the flaws in the Act and highlights how the lawsuit filed yesterday to counter it is rather solid.
To begin, I would speculate that you are probably aware that from June 19, Louisiana has now become the first state in the country to require public schools to post a copy of the Ten Commandments in every classroom.
The Act that has now been signed into Law is HB71
Those who worded the act know how this game is played and have learned from previous attempts at doing stuff like this. The text of the Act has been written to ensure that the actual display is a specific size and the precise words in english are legally mandated. So yes, fun as it might be to have a poster in Hebrew, Arabic, or even Klingon, or a display using a very very tiny font that nobody can see, none of those would not be legal.
However ….
Yes indeed, spoiler alert, despite giving it a lot of very careful thought, they still managed to screw it up. I’ll save that detail for the end, because there are a lot of other deeply problematic issues with it. I don’t just mean the fact that it very blatantly breaches constitutional church-state separation principles, but the text itself is quite frankly crazy, so let’s start with that.
The precise wording in the Act
Starting at page 3 of the 6 page , the text reads …
B.(1) No later than January 1, 2025, each public school governing authority shall display the Ten Commandments in each classroom in each school under its jurisdiction. The nature of the display shall be determined by each governing authority with a minimum requirement that the Ten Commandments shall be displayed on a poster or framed document that is at least eleven inches by fourteen inches. The text of the Ten Commandments shall be the central focus of the poster or framed document and shall be printed in a large, easily readable font.
(2) The text shall read as follows:
“The Ten Commandments
I AM the LORD thy God.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven images.
Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
Thou shalt not kill.
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Thou shalt not steal.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his cattle, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.
How many commandments have you got there?
Eleven apparently.
So let’s briefly mull over each of these supposed “moral” rules.
The Big 10 or is that 11?
So this is where I take a brief pop at the core concept. It’s not a legal argument, and to be clear the lawsuit countering the Act does not do anything like this. Below is just me venting a bit about some religious lunacy by pointing out the the big 10 are not the be-all and end-all moral guidelines that many claim them to be
Thou shalt have no other gods before me. – That’s very obviously not a moral or ethical rule, but instead is a religious rule. I always find it odd that a supposed god makes the observation that he is not alone and that there are lots of other gods out there. To be clear there is exactly zero credible evidence for any gods.
Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven images. – Yep, another religious rule that has nothing to do with morality. If enacted it would ban a great deal of art. Will those who truly believe go full Taliban one day and burn all medieval artistic depictions of Jesus. Most would consider such a step to be deeply immoral.
Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain. – And yet another religious rule that has no real moral value at all. If enacted it would be in direct conflict with free speech. Again, this is a deeply immoral idea.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. – And again, another religious rule. So far this list is not doing very well as a supposed ultimate moral code. Aside from the fact that not many observe this on the official day, Saturday, it again is also deeply immoral and totally crazy. Doctors, nurses, emergency response folks, and many others, all have an ethical duty to ignore such a rule.
Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. – How exactly does respecting your parents result in people living longer, and what land has a god actually given to anybody. I have lots more questions, for example, are the kids of abusive or absent parents supposed to follow this dictate? Would it not be a lot better to have a rule about respecting all humans?
Thou shalt not kill. – Now this makes sense, but it is also a rather unoriginal and very obvious rule. Was anybody actually getting ready to rush out and kill until they then read this? God’s “special” tribe proceeded to go out and slaughter all the other tribes on a literally biblical scale after being told about this, so clearly this one did not pan out all that well.
Thou shalt not commit adultery. – No irony is lost by the observation that the promoters of this just love their beloved Lord and Saviour, the Adultery-in-Chief sexual predator, and give him a free pass. If this does not apply to him, then why would anybody else take it seriously?
Thou shalt not steal. – But that does not apparently apply to land because god’s chosen then proceeded to rush out and steal land after slaughtering all the inhabitants. Nor does it apply to their Lord and Saviour, the chosen one, the convicted felon. He gets a free pass for that as well.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. – except when lying about a supposedly stolen election, apparently that is OK. There is also one other big lie within the words of the Act itself that is being used to promote the Ten Commandments. This is coming up a bit further on.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house – not just a house, see next bit , because this actually gets combined with the next bit into one rule.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his cattle, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s. – “His”!!!, well OK, apart from the rater archaic gender bias, it is basically a thought crime against the entire economic system and advertising industry. If enacted into law you would not be permitted to even think about wanting anything that your neighbour has. That’s just not unreasonable and unrealistic, it is totally bonkers.
That’s it then. As the supposed ultimate moral guide it is very obviously not fit for purpose, and that’s what they wish to promote.
What is perhaps more interesting is what is missing within the above list. Not a word about slavery, rape, racism, or child abuse.
In other words, if asked to write down ten rules for life, literally any modern human could do far far better. Here is an example …
Something akin to the above is a far superior set of 10 rules for living a good life.
So what exactly do they expect to happen by mandating their archaic and deeply flawed set of re-written religious rules in all schools? Exactly how many 5 year old kindergarten kids will be thinking “Well gosh, I never knew, and there was me about to do a bit of adultery and idol worship“.
Also, good luck to the teachers who now have to explain what adultery is to 5 year olds.
The text in Act HB71 is even crazier than the concept
So where in the bible will you find the ten commandments?
Interestingly enough, many who advocate for the Bible as the ultimate moral guide often don’t know.
The reality is that there is no actual agreed upon list of ten commandments. There are different sets in different places …
There are multiple translations of all these and many translations apply a different interpretation to the original Hebrew. For some the differences might be minor, but history reveals that people have literally slaughtered each other over these differences. That was especially true in previous centuries when it came to the use of what some deemed to be idols.
What the Louisiana Act actually does is to select one very specific translation, the King James version, from just one of those four distinctly different lists, Exodus 20, wraps it all with a narrative of Christian nationalist mythology and propaganda, and then attempts to impose that by law on everybody, and basically tough luck luck to anybody who is not religious or holds a different variation of religious belief.
Oh and did I forget to mention that they did not take the KJV text from Exodus exactly as it is written, but instead they edited it. In other words what they are promoting is not the bible text, but their own specific rewrite of it. This is literally state sanctioned holy writ.
Here we have the state imposing its very own distinct religious dogma.
This is very very unconstitutional and so lawsuits are of course already incoming. I don’t mean that a lawsuit is being planned, but rather that it is already here … see case here that was filed yesterday June 24.
I can only speculate that the lawsuit was the intended game plan here and so they hope that SCOTUS, when this gets there, will back them up.
They anticipated all this and so the Act has words that attempt to play the “it’s tradition” stance … like this (Page 1, clause 4) …
(4) Recognizing the historical role of the Ten Commandments accords with our nation’s history and faithfully reflects the understanding of the founders of our nation with respect to the necessity of civic morality to a functional self-government. History records that James Madison, the fourth President of the United States of America, stated that “(w)e have staked the whole future of our new nation . . . upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments.”
The ever so embarrassing flaw there is that this supposed Madison quote is totally fake.
This is what happens when you listen to pseudo-historians like David Barton, you embrace historical fiction as fact.
In other words, this entire legal effort to promote religion is based upon a deliberate Christian Nationalist lie. You would think that the commandment that says “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor” should have tipped them off, but apparently not.
The text of the lawsuit drives this point home … (Page 11, clauses 42-45) …
42. The Act includes false statements relating to a purported history and connection between the Ten Commandments and government and public education in the United States.
43. For example, in Section 1(A)(4) of H.B. 71, the Act asserts that “James Madison, the fourth President of the United States of America, stated that ‘(w)e have staked the whole future of our new nation . . . upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments.’”
44. In fact, the quotation is fabricated. Madison never said this in any of his public or private writings or in any of his speeches.
45. There is no longstanding tradition of permanently displaying the Ten Commandments in public-school classrooms in Louisiana or the United States more generally.
“Yea, but that’s just the opinion of a bunch of non-believing atheists“, some might quip.
Er … no, not only is the Madison quote total fiction, but the list of plaintiffs for this lawsuit is quite amazing. It consists of multiple clergy members from a variety of religious backgrounds …
REVEREND DARCY ROAKE and ADRIAN VAN YOUNG, on behalf of themselves and on behalf of their minor children, A.V. and S.V.; REVEREND MAMIE BROADHURST and REVEREND RICHARD WILLIAMS, on behalf of themselves and on behalf of their minor child, N.W.; REVEREND JEFF SIMS, on behalf of himself and on behalf of his minor children, A.S., C.S. 1, and C.S. 2; JENNIFER HARDING and BENJAMIN OWENS, on behalf of themselves and on behalf of their minor child, A.O.; ERIN HAWLEY and DAVID HAWLEY, on behalf of themselves and on behalf of their minor children, A.H. and L.H.; DUSTIN MCCRORY, on behalf of himself and on behalf of his minor children, E.M., P.M., and L.M; GARY SERNOVITZ and MOLLY PULDA, on behalf of themselves and on behalf of their minor child, T.S.; CHRISTY ALKIRE, on behalf of herself and on behalf of her minor child, L.A.; JOSHUA HERLANDS, on behalf of himself and on behalf of his minor children, E.H. and J.H.,
In other words, this is not a few non-believers going after Christianity. Instead it is the real Christians, along with others, who recognise that destroying church-state separation threatens religious liberty, so they are going after the Christian Nationalist cultists.
The lawsuit is a very carefully crafted 43 page document so clearly they did not knock it up over a few days. They could see that the Act was incoming and have been preparing for it, hence the lawsuit is robust.
The case has been randomly assigned to Judge John deGravelles. He was nominated by Obama, so you can anticipate a sensible ruling because he has not been bought and paid for. That sensible judgement in turn will be appealed, and so this case is on its way to SCOTUS and will arrive there in a few years.
The only way for the Act to stand in the long run is for SCOTUS to override the constitution. But that has perhaps been the real game plan here from the start.
I did also advise that they seriously screwed up
Beyond the rather blatant lie, there is something else.
If a school simply refuses, then what happens?
Nothing at all. No penalty for failure to obey this law has been defined.
Any attempt to impose a penalty would be a literal religious persecution by the state on behalf of one specific state sponsored variation of religion. Is that really where they want to go, because that is where this road leads. It is completely mad.
The choice is simple – either the state remains neutral, and everybody is free to believe whatever they wish, or one strand of belief becomes state endorsed and then proceeds to trample all over everybody else by eliminating freedom of conscience and freedom of speech.
I really do hope that we are better than the Louisiana legislature who have utterly failed all those they represent.
The Ten Tweets
Twitter has been going full-twitter on all of this…
Meanwhile George Carlin has a few words about the Ten Commandments
He sums it all up rather well …