Uh...no
AffectionateDan said:
...there are still some in authority that have the integrity to stand by their beliefs, not compromising to appease the noisy minority. Sounds like a good man! The country needs more with that kind of honor.
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Um, what he's doing is pushing his religion. Seperation of church and state dictates that as a no-no, which is why he's being told to remove the monument. It's not HIS building, he just works there.
The chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court is heading for a showdown with a higher authority over his insistence on using the state's power to push his religion.
Chief Justice Roy Moore will announce today whether he will honor an Aug. 20 federal court deadline for removing a 2½-ton monument to the Ten Commandments that Moore surreptitiously installed in the rotunda of his court building one night two years ago. Some of Moore's evangelical Christian friends are threatening to physically block any effort to remove the black granite block inscribed with the Commandments.
In spite of their arguments, this case is not about whether the Ten Commandments is a religious text or, as they claim, a summary of religious and civil law. That question was put to rest by the nation's highest court in a 1980 Supreme Court ruling that found the Ten Commandments is "undeniably a sacred text." Therefore, the court ruled, posting it on public buildings violates the separation of church and state.
Instead, Moore's actions test whether the Supreme Court is the ultimate authority for interpreting the U.S. Constitution. Otherwise, Moore, as the officer of a state court, can thumb his nose at a long history of Supreme Court rulings.
Proponents describe the Commandments as an important but benign acknowledgement of the origins of universal law. But a close reading suggests they're largely concerned with religion:
The First Commandment to most Christians and the Second to Jews is "thou shalt have no other God before me," a religious doctrine subscribed to by many Americans, but certainly not all.
More than half of the Commandments' biblical text is about religious observance: no idolatry, no misuse of the Lord's name and no work on the Sabbath, for example.
The Supreme Court considers the matter settled: Three attempts to reopen the issue were turned away in the past three years.
Yet similar disputes over publicly posting the Ten Commandments are bubbling currently in at least 13 other states, from Washington and Arizona to Massachusetts and Florida. One fight over a plaque on a courthouse in West Chester, Pa., has pitted neighbor against neighbor in a battle of suburban lawn signs. Last month, Kentucky had to pay court-ordered costs of more than $120,000 after losing a lawsuit over an unconstitutional Ten Commandments monument legislators acquired three years ago.
By some counts there are nearly 2,000 religions, denominations, traditions and sects in this diverse land. Each deserves the protection from a state-established religion that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees.
The U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) is the proper authority for deciding when the Constitution's promises are endangered. Its willingness to embrace that role even in the face of recalcitrant state authorities has served the nation well in past disputes over school desegregation and voting rights.
The high court's authority is no less important today as some state officials use an important part of Jewish and Christian religious tradition in a divisive game of one-upmanship that is an affront both to religion and to the ideals of a tolerant civil society.
