[caption id="attachment_5818" align="alignright" width="228" caption="Rembrandt Ten Commandments (wikimedia commons)"]
[/caption]Carol Forsloff - Louisiana politicians maintain a monument of the Ten Commandments on state capitol grounds in Baton Rouge does not violate the separation of church and state intent, but the addition of 600 new laws passed last year in the state reveals how the legislature isn’t as much into less government as it is into making more laws and hearkening to symbols instead.
The Ten Commandments is said not to promote the religious importance of the commandments but their historical significance and the fact that many Louisiana laws are based upon them. While that, in fact, is true, there are many deviations of laws from those rules as well. It also serves as a reminder not just how far modern culture has deviated from the absolute enforcement of those laws and how man’s interpretation of them differs in so very many ways.
Democratic Representative Patrick Williams, the author of the bill that passed unanimously, said to Reuters news, "Our laws are based on the Ten Commandments. In fact, without them, a lot of our laws would not exist." Governor Bobby Jindal is now expected to sign the bill into law that allows the granite monument displaying the Commandments to be prominently displayed on capital grounds. He bases his statement on the 2005 Supreme Court decision that upheld Texas’s monument with the Commandments as having “undeniable historical meaning.”
But constitutional scholar Marci Hamilton was quoted by Reuters that the reasons cited by Louisiana legislators isn’t as neutral as it needs to be, as he remarked,"If the government is sending a pro-religion message, that's unconstitutional. Hamilton is a professor at Yeshiva University in New York and author of "God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law." The specifics of how the Ten Commandments are displayed, and the reasons for doing so, are critical in how the courts decide about them, as in the same year the Supreme Court upheld Texas law, it ruled against a display of the Ten Commandments in two rural Kentucky courthouses. The court decided it was an effort to promote religion.
Hamilton was quoted by Reuters as saying, that although the Constitution may allow the display of the Ten Commandments "along with other sources of law such as the Magna Carta," it appears that the Louisiana proposal would put "a Christian-backed monument" on the Capitol grounds.
"The Legislature is signaling that it's welcoming millions of dollars of litigation, because this will be challenged," she said.
Which of the Ten Commandments is related to these two Louisiana laws?
RS 4:75
�75. Sham or fake contests or exhibitions
Whoever conducts or is a party to any sham or fake boxing contest or wrestling exhibition shall forfeit his license and shall not thereafter be entitled to receive any license pursuant to the provisions of this chapter.
RS 14:37.3
Unlawful use of a laser on a police officer
And to be less hypocritical, how many of the Louisiana legislators in passing the bill on the Ten Commandments monument have violated the eighth commandment against bearing false witness or lying in their political advertising or the tenth commandment against coveting one’s neighbor’s wife, a practice fairly common?
And should there be a law that says you ought to go to jail for swearing and someone turns you in? For if there is no law like that, some might wonder why a monument would impact one's behavior and what relevance it would have as a religious device? In that sense, the historical nature of the Ten Commandments might outweigh the arguments again their display.
These questions, and the Constitution, form the basis of discussion, about the Ten Commandments and Louisiana laws, as the number of bills and clauses to describe those laws that now exist continue to multiply
