The Best Commandment

     So, let's talk about religion. Religion? Really, Boss?! Man, you've lost your damn mind... Chill, my furry descendent of the saber-toothed tiger. No theology, as it were. No Gnosticism vs. Christianity vs. Judaism vs. Islam. But we did notice that you put Gnosticism first in that list. I know. Pretty sly, huh? Anyway, I just wanted to talk about a movement that I thought had come and gone. No such luck. It would seem that, one Jeff Landry, who is the Republican governor of the great state of Louisiana, recently signed a bill requiring ALL public schools in the state to display a poster of The Ten Commandments in each and every classroom. The Commandments must be, according to the text of the bill, in "large, easily readable font," and they will be displayed at every level of schooling, including at public universities. Well, now.

    Landry, who clearly wants to be the bully he could never get away with as a youth, said the following: "If you want to respect the rule of law, you've got to start from the original law giver, which was Moses." He then added that he "can't wait to be sued" over this. Oh, please. Those two quotes alone are reason enough to hope he gets hit by a bus. Easy, Boss!

    Governor Landry, while he tries to go to the head of the culture war provocateur class, may want to take a gander and see how the courts may rule on this topic, as they have already done so. At that time, in 1980, the Supreme Court overturned a similar statute in Stone v. Graham, ruling that the First Amendment bars displays of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. The court said such displays "had no secular legislative purpose" and were "plainly religious in nature." Now, to be fair, The Ten Commandments are pretty good rules to live by, and they have been a huge part of Western culture since, well, there was a Western Culture. Don't Kill; Don't Covet; Honor Your Parents; No Stealing; No False Witness, etc. But, and there's always a "But." The other laws talk about the religious duties of believers: worshipping the Lord God alone; avoiding idolatry; observe the Sabbath; don't use the Lord's name in vain. 

    You see what I mean? If you're planting The Ten Commandments in every class, it's not the same as using The Bible in some comparative religions course or, better yet, a literature course...which, for someone like me, is where it belongs. If it's not integrated into the curriculum, then all you're doing is telling kids they need to read this poster, meditate upon it, and encourage them to obey. I certainly don't want anyone, let alone the state, encouraging young people what to believe and how to meditate. As the Supreme Court wrote back in 1980, "However desirable this might be as a matter of private devotion, it is not a permissible state objective under the Establishment Clause." 

    Look, I get it. Today's public schools are not the bastions of reading, writing, and arithmetic like they once were. Many of them have turned into ideological ovens cooking up one bat-shit idea after another, and kids end up being "graduated" to the next grade without knowing how to read at the level they should, or do basic math like they should, or not knowing what century the Civil War was fought in...LIKE THEY SHOULD! And some of you may be saying to yourself, "Peter, with all the crap that kids have to put up with in his/her school today, is putting a copy of The Ten Commandments really that bad of an idea? What's the harm?" I used to ask myself the same question and more often then not, I found myself leaning to the idea that it isn't such a bad idea. But time goes on and people change. I mean, I used to be obnoxious, and now...well, maybe that's a bad example, but you know what I mean. You're an idiot! Does all this mean that I get to go to Louisiana and leave copies of the great gnostic gospel, The Gospel of Thomas in every classroom? Of course not. While educational, enlightening, and much better reading than Matthew, Luke, and John (I still contend the Gospel of Mark is the only New Testament gospel worth reading)...it would be unconstitutional. 

    And not to put too fine a point on it, but one can make a great case (which I try to do whenever someone asks, or maybe, even when they don't) that we were not founded as a Christian Nation, no matter what these quasi-fascist, Christian Nationalists would tell you. We were founded as a refuge for the freedom to worship as we pleased. The Founding Fathers were not Moral Majority evangelical Christians. The vast majority of them were Deists; you know, God as a watchmaker that just set everything in motion and then went off and played golf for the rest of time. Hey, wait a minute! Now that's a God I could believe in!! All this is what I meant when I typed "The Best Commandment" above. The unspoken commandment that says, "Do Not Mix Church and State." But I digress...

    Anyway, it just seems to me that politicians (the State) have no business imposing their preferred religious doctrine, whatever it may be, on students and families in public schools. This isn't a theocracy. You want religious tracts and posters everywhere in schools and other government buildings...go to Iran. Have fun! Hey, here's a novel idea! Why not put a big, honking copy of the Declaration of Independence along side a big, honking copy of The Constitution of the United States in every classroom, bathroom, and principal's office, and make students AND administrators read those documents every morning. And maybe, just maybe, we can get back to growing up again. 

    Here endeth the lesson.

write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com