Supreme Court to hear The Ten Commandment cases tomorrow

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Should the Ten Commandments be removed?

Yes, they should be removed.
16
47%
No, they shouldn't be removed.
18
53%
 
Total votes: 34

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Brotha
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Supreme Court to hear The Ten Commandment cases tomorrow

Post by Brotha »

On Wends. the Supreme Court is going to hear the arguments concerning whether the Ten Commandments should be removed or not.

There can be no doubt that the Ten Commandments have great historical value, and I can't really see why it should be stricken from all government land because it also has religious meaning.

As long as it's in context I have no problem with it. But then again, context is a pretty subjective term sometimes. The Ten Commandments outside of a court of law could be in context even if it's by itself, because it's a set of laws that have influenced us. However, if a cross with "Jesus died for your sins" was outside a courthouse it wouldn't be in context, and I'd certainly be for it getting removed.

As far as I'm concerned, in these cases there's nothing wrong with displaying the Ten Commandments.

Note: I'm not a Christian. Please don't try to pull the "Christian fanatic" card on me.

I thought about making the poll question more complicated (i.e. making more than one yes or no answer and qualifiying them), but I decided not to. Just generally speaking, do you think they should be removed?

The courts disagree with me on what's in context and what's not, to quote from the article:

Not in context:
Clearly, context matters, although exactly how it matters is open to debate, as the Kentucky case, McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky, No. 03-1693, demonstrates. The case began in 1999, when the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the display of the Ten Commandments, hanging unadorned in solitary frames in the McCreary County and Pulaski County courthouses.
In context:
In the Texas case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, upheld the Texas monument on essentially that basis, finding that "a reasonable viewer touring the Capitol and its grounds" would find a predominantly secular rather than religious message in the Ten Commandments, one of 17 monuments in a 22-acre park that carries a designation as a national historic landmark.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/polit ... gewanted=1
WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 - One federal court upheld them as a symbol of the country's devotion to its legal heritage. Another federal court ordered them removed as an illicit message of religious endorsement. Fifteen months ago, Alabama's chief justice lost his job over them, and the two-ton granite monument that once sat in the rotunda of the state courthouse is now the star of a national tour. The profile of the Ten Commandments, it seems, has rarely been higher, or their ability to attract lawsuits greater.

Now, as with all great controversies in American life, this one has finally reached the Supreme Court. In two cases to be argued on Wednesday, the basic question for the justices will be: what does it mean for the government to display a copy of the Ten Commandments?

To those who seek removal of the displays - a six-foot red granite monument that has sat since 1961 on the grounds of the Texas Capitol, and framed copies of the Ten Commandments that were hung five years ago on the walls of two Kentucky courthouses - the meaning is as obvious as it is impermissibly sectarian.

"There is no secular purpose in placing on government property a monument declaring 'I am the Lord thy God,' " Prof. Erwin Chemerinsky of Duke University Law School wrote in his brief for Thomas Van Orden, an Austin resident who has so far been unsuccessful in his challenge to the Texas monument. It is one of thousands placed around the country in the 1950's and 1960's by the Fraternal Order of Eagles with the support of Cecil B. DeMille, the director, who was promoting his movie "The Ten Commandments."

"The government is not supposed to be for religion or against religion," Douglas Laycock, a professor and associate dean at the University of Texas School of Law, said in a discussion of the cases here on Thursday sponsored by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. "You don't put up a sign you disagree with, and the government doesn't disagree with these."

At the same event, Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, a law firm established by the Rev. Pat Robertson that litigates for evangelicals and other religious communities, offered a different perspective. The Ten Commandments have acquired secular as well as religious meaning, he said, and have come to be "uniquely symbolic of law."

Mr. Sekulow noted that the marble frieze in the courtroom of the Supreme Court building itself depicts Moses, holding the tablets, in a procession of "great lawgivers of history." (The 17 other figures in the frieze include Hammurabi, Confucius, Justinian, Napoleon, Chief Justice John Marshall and Muhammad, who holds the Koran.) "Does the Supreme Court now issue an opinion that requires a sandblaster to come in? I think not," Mr. Sekulow said.

The Bush administration, which has filed briefs urging the justices to uphold the displays in both cases, takes the same approach, calling the Ten Commandments "a uniquely potent and commonly recognized symbol of the law."

Professor Laycock, who filed a brief on behalf of the Baptist Joint Committee against the display in the Texas case, Van Orden v. Perry, No. 03-1500, disparaged as "sham litigation" the effort to depict the Commandments as anything other than profoundly religious. To defend the Commandments as a historical or legal document is "to desacralize a sacred text, to rip it out of context and distort its meaning and significance," he said. "It ought to be unconvincing to people outside the religious tradition and insulting to those within it."

The debate over the Ten Commandments is reminiscent of the debate before the court a year ago over the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, which an atheist from California, Michael A. Newdow, challenged as an unconstitutional establishment of religion and the Bush administration defended as a historical reflection of the country's spiritual roots. The court never resolved the issue, eventually dismissing the case on the ground that Dr. Newdow had lacked standing to bring it.

The Pledge case nonetheless drew an illuminating separate opinion from Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has often cast the deciding vote in religion cases. She called the words "under God" an example of "ceremonial deism," which she defined as the use of religious idiom for "essentially secular purposes" that does not offend the Constitution.

Whether Justice O'Connor will take a similar view of the Ten Commandments is anyone's guess. On the one hand, the Commandments contain not two words but approximately 120, closer to the 100-word high school graduation prayer that Justice O'Connor found unconstitutional in a 1992 case.

On the other hand, while the Pledge is recited each morning in public school classrooms, creating a powerful government message that is difficult to ignore even for those children who exercise their constitutional right not to participate, the Ten Commandments stand mute. People who do not feel drawn to a monument or framed depiction can avert their eyes and walk on by.

Clearly, context matters, although exactly how it matters is open to debate, as the Kentucky case, McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky, No. 03-1693, demonstrates. The case began in 1999, when the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the display of the Ten Commandments, hanging unadorned in solitary frames in the McCreary County and Pulaski County courthouses.

The counties quickly modified the displays to include the texts of the Declaration of Independence, the Mayflower Compact, the Star-Spangled Banner, the Bill of Rights, and several other images that the counties named, collectively, the "foundations of American law and government."

Nonetheless, the federal district court in London, Ky., ordered the entire display removed, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, agreed. It held that the "foundations" documents as a collective retained the "unconstitutional taint" of the original, solitary Ten Commandments display.

The counties' lawyers at Liberty Counsel, a Florida-based organization affiliated with Liberty University, whose chancellor is the Rev. Jerry Falwell, object in their brief that "no reasonable observer would consider the Foundations Display an endorsement of religion."

In the Texas case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, upheld the Texas monument on essentially that basis, finding that "a reasonable viewer touring the Capitol and its grounds" would find a predominantly secular rather than religious message in the Ten Commandments, one of 17 monuments in a 22-acre park that carries a designation as a national historic landmark.

One question is whether the court will try to derive a broad principle from the pair of cases or whether it will stress the distinct facts of each. Another question is the standard for judging governmental displays with religious content. Justice O'Connor has long advocated an "endorsement" test: does the government appear to be endorsing religion to the extent that a nonbeliever would be made to feel an outsider?

Other touchstones for the court's analysis in such cases include an evaluation of "purpose," "effect," and - sometimes present but never acknowledged - politics. "Supreme Court Strikes Down Ten Commandments" is a headline that few Supreme Court justices want to read.
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Post by Marbus »

Here is my take... yes they have great historical value for Western Civilization. If they were placed there by the community and or donated then I think they should stay. However I don't think that city revenue should be able to purcahse things that might or might not be representative of their population, it's part of everyone's money right?

However just having them displayed shouldn't be an issue. If a primarily muslim community in the US wanted to put up some law or sayings from the Koran because they are meaningful to them then so be it.

My feelings are if you don't like it, don't read it, it's not going to jump out and bite you... stop wearing your feelings on your sleeve.

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Post by nobody »

i think they should stay not b/c they are christian but they resemble the values of society. if they were from any other religion i would make feel the same way.
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Post by Wulfran »

Yeah, I'm not an American so some of you may discount my opinion but...

I agree that a lot can be said about the context of the display. If they are displayed with copies of documents like The Magna Carta, Justinian's Code and the Laws of Hammurabi (which actually have more historical significance to Western Society and formation our laws/legal systems than the 10 Commandments), then I could find it acceptable.

Standing alone, they are not.

First and foremost justice should be fair and impartial, thus the display of any religious symbol implies a bias (however slight) to proponents of that religion. IMO that is the wrong message for a courthouse or other legal facility to display. You can add in the standard arguments about seperation of church and state, and freedom of religion to this if you wish. No one is prohibiting Christians, Jews or Muslims from practicing their religions, however this sends the message that their religion is not state sponsoured and denies any implication the government (and thus the law) will discriminate based on or against it.

And as a final observation, just because something is donated, does not mean it must be displayed...
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Post by Rekaar. »

They're a universal symbol of law in our society. Seems fitting they adorn most courthouses and legislative offices...including the very courtroom where this case will be heard.

On a silly sidenote, just imagine the millions of taxpayer dollars that will have to be spent paying sandblasters to "clean up" every other federal building in the country.
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Post by Siji »

This will never end up with them banning it. That would require admitting that there's supposed to be a 'seperation of church and state'. Considering the current president thinks he's sent by God personally, that'll never happen.
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Post by Rekaar. »

Are you being this politically illiterate on purpose?
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Post by Niffoni »

As much as America was founded as a non-Christian nation (and anyone who flails like a nitwit and argues the reverse is perpetuating one of those fallacies that have been repeated so often, some people think they're fact), I fail to see the harm of their display since there are many areas of the country with strong Christan backgrounds.

Now, if they were voting on a federally funded project to display them in every courthouse, THAT'S when you go "Holy Shit!" and beat the fuck out of the righties. Banning the commandments from govt. ground, however, is a stupid pet-project of a few non-christians who need a meaningless cause to get behind. Should it be done? Maybe. But aren't there more important things to do?
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Post by Sionistic »

What annoys me is that some groups think that laws arnt enough to teach right from wrong, we need some stone tablet to do it. :/
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Post by Sueven »

Rekaar wrote:On a silly sidenote, just imagine the millions of taxpayer dollars that will have to be spent paying sandblasters to "clean up" every other federal building in the country.
I call bullshit. I think you're making shit up and sandblasting the ten commandments off of federal buildings will never cost taxpayers even one million dollars.

I'm willing to be proven wrong. Do you have any sort of evidence that such an expense would be incurred, or is it just conjecture?
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Post by Fairweather Pure »

As long as the big 10 are displayed in political buildings, the religious fundies will lean on them. I say take them out and leave them out. They'll need to do it fast like a band-aid or else the fundies will all let out a collective "my pussy hurts" over the days that follow the ruling.

The 10 Commandments are not some shining beacon of God on how to live amoungst our fellow men. They are obvious and natural ways in which to function in a society. These norms existed far before the Moses story was thought up and will exist as long as there is organized society.

Besides, if all the fundies flip a gasket once they're voted out, they'll pour even more energy and money into the 10 Commandment issue and ignore my precious, precious porn.
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Post by Xzion »

Sure you have the right to have the 10 commandments on display in your own office or private space if you personally pay for it, but theres no reason why some artificial document that maybe 1 out of every 5 americans take seriously should be "on display" in the front of a government building
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