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Originally posted by j8ear
If you feel that way, more power to you. If that influences your personal constitution, I feel sorry for you, Lurkette. You seem more enlightened then that. I don't want to believe that you REALLY think that it means ~you~ are being influenced religiously by your government.
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It's not about influencing ME, it's about the symbolic value of a religious text. It is flat out inappropriate to choose one religious text, regardless of how many peoples' religions it represents, for display in a place of law. As I've said before, it's tacit endorsement of ONE religious view by a representative of the government, which dilutes the confidence (of people who hold alternate views) in the objectivity of the person who's presiding in judgment over them.
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What about teaching it in school? Or even learning about the seven deadly sins, or hammarubi's code or the magna carta, or the rosetta stone, or Stone Henge for that matter. Why not have the federal government forbid teaching these things in school, at ~public~ institutions?
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The 10 commandments have no place in a public school. You can teach the precepts without teaching the text. If you're looking at the history of different culture's legal systems, then it would be appropriate as a text AMONG other cultural texts. The other things you cite (Hammurabi's code, the Magna Carta, the Rosetta Stone) are not religious texts, so I would have no problem with them being taught about in a public school. Kids learn about Stonehenge as a historical and archaeological "text," not as part of a Druid curriculum.
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To me the only thing out of line is the federal government getting involved.
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Why on earth do you object to the federal government getting involved? I don't understand.
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The people could even use the local court system if they wanted to go the SLOW assed beaurocratically ineffiecient way. Eliminate the funding for the monument, or however they spend and allocate resources down in 'bama. Just a thought, an alternative to the feds if you will.
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Um, the local court system has no jurisdiction over the state supreme court as far as I know. How do you think this got to the federal level? Someone (a citizen presumably) complained to a state court, it got appealed to the 3rd US Circuit court of appeals and appealed again to a higher court - at the FEDERAL level. That's the hierarchy of the legal system.
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Federal laws...it's always your solution, huh?
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No, it's the solution in this case where all other local/state appeals have been exhausted. Why do you automatically object to an action if it's at the federal level, when that is the appropriate level for action?
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It is christian, jewish, and muslim in origin, probably representing the largest single slice of humanity possible. It's orgins in religion are much less important then it's orgins in humanity.
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It doesn't matter how many people it represents - what's important is the people it DOESN'T represent. How would you feel as a Hindu, or a Buddhist, walking into a courthouse where the 10 commandments were prominently on display?