atheistdave

The following was printed as an editorial in the Terre Haute Tribune Star this past Sunday.

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Church-state separation isn't hostility to religion

Novemebr 3, 2002

We trust that the Ten Commandments will continue to guide the lives of Hoosiers, despite the trend to banish the good words of advice from public property across the state.

The latest stone slab etched with the commandments to get travel orders is a 2,500-pound granite monument that had graced the front of Mishawaka's City Hall since 1959. Two weeks ago it was moved to the lawn of a nearby church.

A month earlier, a similar monolith was moved from in front of Elkhart's City Hall to private property. The 6-foot-tall pink-granite monument had been a local landmark for four decades.

Shifting Ten Commandment monuments from public to private property brought an end in both cities to emotional and costly legal battles that had pitted the religious against the secular. At issue: whether such displays at municipal buildings violate the principal of separation of church and state.

Interestingly, the granite monuments that are the subject of so much hoopla today are the offspring of those commissioned by legendary film director Cecil B. DeMille almost 50 years ago. DeMille conceived the idea of the massive slabs, etched with God's words to Moses, in 1956 to publicize and promote both morality and a blockbuster remake of his 1920s classic, "The Ten Commandments."

The idea spread.

Ten Commandments statues began cropping up in parks, in front of public buildings and on state-capital lawns. Often the projects were funded by local chapters of the Fraternal Order of Eagles. Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner and others from the cast of the movie sometimes helped dedicate the monuments.

Once excitement generated by the stars and the ceremonies passed, the stone slabs sat -- mostly in obscurity -- for decades. Then in the 1990s, residents and civil liberty groups began to protest the placement at public buildings of what they saw as religious icons.

In Elkhart the legal controversy began in 1998 when the Indiana Civil Liberties Union sued the city on behalf of residents Michael Suetkamp and William Brooks. They had complained that religious objects don't belong on public property.

A judge initially ruled that Elkhart's Ten Commandments monument was constitutional, noting that it was part of an historical display. But a federal appeals court overturned that decision in December 2000. Last May, in a divided opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, and in August, a U.S. District Court ordered the city to pay $630,000 for legal expenses incurred by the ICLU.

Mishawaka's monument lawsuit, filed by local attorney and college teacher David Hoffman and the ICLU, was less than a year old and just starting to wend its way through the courts. Taking note of Elkhart's losses in court and at the cash register, Mishawaka city government decided to move the monument rather than continue what it feared could be an expensive, fruitless case.

Meanwhile, similar legal arguments continue in Indiana and elsewhere. About two dozen jurisdictions in eight or nine states have cases pending or on appeal. And in February, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear, on appeal, a district court ruling that told the O'Bannon administration it couldn't erect a Ten Commandments display on the Statehouse lawn in Indianapolis.

The legal tussles underscore a willingness to misunderstand the relationship of government and religion. The historical separation of church and state has survived the tests of time and courtroom. The Constitutional demarcation is as good for religion as it is for government, and we needn't look far to see the consequences of mixing the two.

Separation of church and state does not imply hostility to religion. In fact, for religious freedom to flourish, government must leave it alone. Conversely, only if religion leaves government alone can our other liberties be sustained.

The Ten Commandments is an excellent code of behavior for governing one's self. Yet we favor the Constitution when it comes to self-governance of our state and our nation.

Are displays of the Ten Commandments in front of city hall in Mishawaka, Elkhart and other American communities so awful? Of course not. But such symbolic blending of the secular and the spiritual is not a role the founding fathers thought it wise to prescribe for government in a nation of diverse religious beliefs.

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A well done fair article IMHO. I am sure the fundies are going to jump all over it.

Dave

Splat

Thanks for posting that Dave--it's excellent.