USA
September 25, 2003 VNN8370
No Ten Commandments In Alabama Courthouse
BY NASHVILLE CITY PAPER
USA, Sep 25 (VNN) — Commentary by Bill Press - September 03, 2003 Thank God for the people of Alabama. They make the rest of us look normal.
A band of Alabama zealots, led by Chief Justice Roy Moore, are determined to keep a monument of the Ten Commandments prominently displayed in an Alabama judicial building.
Under orders of a federal judge, the 5,300-pound monument known as "Roy's Rock" was moved out of the building's rotunda - where it had been installed by Moore in the middle of the night two years ago. Moore has been suspended as chief justice for refusing to obey the law. But he and his deluded followers insist they will continue their protests and legal battles until Moore is back on the bench and the giant granite tablets are back in their place of honor.
In the latest USA Today poll, four out of five Americans say they agree with Moore. But the conservative Wall Street Journal chastised him for making a federal case out of displaying the Ten Commandments.
Moore claims that, by ordering him to take down the monument, federal courts are violating his First Amendment right of freedom of religion. They want to take God out of this country, he and his supporters charge. They won't let them practice their religion.
Nonsense. They've got it backwards. These Christians can pray, worship, sing hymns or read the Bible all they want. They just can't plant a two-ton monument to their particular religion in a government building - and, in effect, turn that building into a religious shrine. Why not? Because it amounts to an official endorsement of one religion over others.
Don't believe it? Ask the Montgomery protestors. I did, on Buchanan and Press . Since he defended religious displays in state buildings, I asked Bob Jewitt of the Christian Defense Coalition if he would support a group of Hare Krishna members erecting a shrine of their own in the state courthouse - in front of which they would dance around in their saffron robes, sing Hare Krishna and burn incense. No way, he said. They didn't deserve the same right as Christians because they weren't around when this country was founded.
Bingo. In other words, Moore's band of Alabama Christians believe in freedom of religion but only for themselves. Christians can erect a monument to the Ten Commandments, but Buddhists can't put up a statue of Buddha. Don't these dingbats get it? That is nothing less than establishment of a state religion - the very evil the First Amendment was designed to protect us against.
Moore makes one other argument: The Ten Commandments belong in the courthouse because they're the foundation of all Western law. Honestly, how did this guy get through law school? He's wrong on that one, too.
There's a big difference between God's law and man's law. It's against the Commandments to dishonor your father or mother, but not against the law. And you won't get sent to jail for not going to church on Sunday either. The Ten Commandments are but one of many sources of our legal legacy, stretching from Hammurabi's Code to King John's Magna Carta. Poor old Hammurabi. No monument to him in the rotunda.
Speaking of religion, what I wonder is: In all of his phony frenzy, did Moore ever stop and ask himself, "What would Jesus do?" In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells us: "When you pray, don't be like the hypocrites. They love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that people may see them. Believe me, they have all the reward they are ever going to get. But when you pray, go into your own room, shut the door and pray to your Father in private. And your Father, who sees all private things, will reward you."
One thing for sure: Jesus would not be flaunting his religion in the rotunda of the Alabama state courthouse.
Bill Press is co-host of MSNBC's Buchanan and Press.
Copyright 2003 The City Paper,LLC
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