Louisiana again
The Pelican State is in the news again. No, it’s not for House Speaker Mike “18th-century values” Johnson, or for Rep. Clay “I’d drop any 10 of you where you stand” Higgins, or for Sen. John “Wanna buy my pig?”* Kennedy, all Republicans.
Gov. Jeff Landry on Wednesday signed into law a bill requiring display of the Ten Commandments in every public classroom in Louisiana. This makes Louisiana the only state with such a requirement. A similar bill proposed in Texas last year failed.
Someone recently suggested that if Christian legislators insist that the Ten Commandments be displayed in public schools, make them display The Beatitudes (the words of Jesus) right beside them. It’d likely be a deal-breaker.
“I can’t wait to be sued,” Landry told the crowd at a Tennessee GOP fundraiser last Saturday.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Freedom From Religion Foundation promise to make Landry’s day.
“Our public schools are not Sunday schools,” the groups said in a joint statement, “and students of all faiths, or no faith, should feel welcome in them.”
“If you want to respect the rule of law,” Landry said, “you’ve got to start from the original law giver, which was Moses.” **
That’s ironic, since 34-times convicted Donald Trump has made disrespecting the rule of law a centerpiece of his reelection campaign and the rest of the GOP seems inclined to fall in line.
Regarding the Ten Commandments law (New York Times):
The legislation is part of a broader campaign by conservative Christian groups to amplify public expressions of faith, and provoke lawsuits that could reach the Supreme Court, where they expect a friendlier reception than in years past. That presumption is rooted in recent rulings, particularly one in 2022 in which the court sided with a high school football coach who argued that he had a constitutional right to pray at the 50-yard line after his team’s games.
“The climate is certainly better,” said Charles C. Haynes, a senior fellow at the Freedom Forum and a scholar with an expertise in religious liberty and civil discourse, referring to the viewpoint of those who support the legislation.
Still, Mr. Haynes said that he found the enthusiasm behind the Louisiana law and other efforts unwarranted. “I think they are overreaching,” he said, adding that “even this court will have a hard time justifying” what lawmakers have conceived.
But we’ve already been surprised by what SCOTUS can justify. Just wait until the rollback of child labor laws reaches the originalists on the Roberts court.
The measure in Louisiana requires that the commandments be displayed in each classroom of every public elementary, middle and high school, as well as public college classrooms. The posters must be no smaller than 11 by 14 inches and the commandments must be “the central focus of the poster” and “in a large, easily readable font.”
It will also include a three-paragraph statement asserting that the Ten Commandments were a “prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries.”
Was it?
In March, a graduate of Bob Jones University, no less, condemned the notion promoted by “authoritarian Christians” that the Bible was a major influence on crafting US. law. One citation in particular spells out where they want to take the country:
In The Case for Christian Nationalism, Stephen Wolfe adds: “The issue here centers on whether a Christian minority can establish a political state over the whole without the positive consent of the whole. I affirm they can. … Non-Christians living among us … are not entitled to political equality, nor do they have a right to deny the people of God their right to order civil institutions to God and to their complete good. … The Christian’s posture toward the earth ought to be that it is ours, not theirs, for we are co-heirs in Christ.”
So we’re not sure what parts of Deuteronomy and the Israelite conquest these men plan to promote. They’re apparently debating these ideas amongst themselves. But what is clear is this: Either we vote against authoritarian Christians or we’ll have to trust them to politically order us toward their God and plunder us against our consent in a way that isn’t too dehumanizing.
Would you bet your freedoms on that? Get your butts and your friends’ and families to the polls this November.
* Not a Kennedy quote, but I hear Pat Buttram (Mr. Haney from Green Acres) any time Kennedy opens his mouth.
** I thought God was the lawgiver and Moses just the messenger. And neither of them appeared at the Constitutional Convention, no matter what Mike Johnson thinks.
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