Look away, patriots!

You’ve probably already formed an opinion about recent attempts to jam religious teaching into public schools. Whether you have or haven’t yet, here’s my take on plans to post the Ten Commandments in schools, and to force teaching of religion in the classroom.

 First, the Ten Commandments. The governor of Louisiana recently signed a law requiring them to be posted in every public school classroom in the state.

 The best case against this idea comes from someone who endorses it. That’s former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore.

 Remember him? He’s the judge who kept railing about “judicial activism” until, in a fit of judicial activism, he placed a two-ton granite statue featuring the Ten Commandments in front of the state court building, then disobeyed a federal judge’s order to remove it from public land, and then was removed from office.

He still bloviates about culture wars issues, and apparently some people still take him seriously. Here’s my take: If Moore loves an idea, you may suspect that it is seriously wrong.

The Louisiana law faces plenty of opposition, including lawsuits. Here is the response of the governor: “When you elect people, you elect them by a majority. That majority gets to rule. And so what I would say to those parents is that if those posters are in school, and they find them so vulgar, just tell the child not to look at it.”

That response is so wrong in so many ways it’s hard to know where to start. Let me skip to the worst part: “The majority gets to rule.” That means, of course, that those in the minority have no rights. Whatever the majority wants is what goes. This is the road to dictatorship.

And if you don’t like dictatorship, just don’t look. Pretend it’s not there.

What’s so wrong about posting the Ten Commandments in schools?

First, it’s an imposition of religion by the state. It’s a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment. It endorses and establishes a religion imposed by the state.

You may argue that the Ten Commandments are simply a list of basic moral rules. Really? Where do they come from? From Jewish scripture, adopted by Christians. Not from any other religious tradition. And the first four commandments are explicitly religious and have nothing to do with “moral” behavior beyond expected religious adherence.

By the way, the Bible contains two versions of the commandments – one in Exodus 20, the other in Deuteronomy 5. Oh, and they are closely mirrored by a third version in Leviticus 19.

Jews, Catholics and Protestants endorse slightly different versions of the Ten. Whichever version you prescribe, you create an establishment of religion that is banned by the Constitution.

Or at least it is until the “originalists” in the Supreme Court come up with an “original” opinion that they say follows exactly what the founders really, truly had in mind when they wrote the Constitution.

Whatever version you prescribe, does one of the commandments say not to “kill” or not to “murder”? Big difference. The original Hebrew says “murder.” But who’s an originalist now?

Anyway, what’s wrong with putting a little morality in the classroom? What’s wrong is that we know that whoever “rules” will try to enforce a very strict (and, dare we say, partisan) morality that, in fact, violates the spirit of the Ten Commandments.

How about a little gospel instead of chiseled-in-stone law? How about posting the text of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in schools? That won’t pass constitutional muster either, of course. But wouldn’t you like to hear any red state governor proposing anything like that? Ever read what Jesus said? Yikes!

I have not forgotten to comment on the teaching of religion in the classroom. It is hard to imagine Louisiana, or any other state inclined to require this, to set up any system that guards against intentional abuse by “Christian” nationalists and fundamentalists.

Rather, they will actually invite such abuse. Because both these efforts have nothing to do with religion or morality in the schools. They’re simply stealth attacks on public education in general. The idea is to make public education impossible, so that private, sectarian, partisan education can prevail – funded by everyone, of course, because the majority rules.

And you can’t just not look at it.