"HANG TEN" CONTROVERSIES CONTINUE IN KENTUCKY, INDIANA
Web Posted: May 20, 2000
he contentious debate over displaying the Ten Commandments on government property
has flared anew in Kentucky and Indiana.
¶ Officials in Harlan, Pulaski and McCreary counties, Kentucky, finally complied with a U.S. Federal Court order to remove displays of the Decalogue from courthouses and public schools.
violated the constitutional separation of church and state.On Wednesday, the commandments came down amidst protests from some religious and civic groups. McCreary County Judge-Executive Jimmie Greene, who in the wake of Coffman's decision vowed not to remove the commandments, led a small contingent of supporters who dismantled the Decalogue display at the county courthouse. The framed documents were transported to the nearby headquarters of the local American Legion Post, "where they will remain unless a court allows them back in the courthouse," noted the Louisville Courier-Journal newspaper.
"God Forgive us" shouted one of about four dozen protesters who assembled at the courthouse. According to an Associated Press report, many wore T-shirts that bore a recitation of the scripture.
Greene boasted that despite his presence at the dismantling, he kept his earlier promise that he would resign or face jail before taking the Commandments down from the courthouse wall.
"Jimmie Greene didn't take them down. The American Legion didn't want me to go to jail and they didn't want me to resign."
Over in Pulaski County, a display of the Commandments was removed from the courthouse "with little fanfare."
Schools in Harlan County complied with Coffman's order after a week of "resistance," but the Courier-Journal noted that empty frames which once displayed the Commandments would be left hanging on classroom walls. County School Safety Director Robert Hansel told reporters that he was drafted for the task of taking down the religious icons because Superintendent Don Musselman "did not have the heart."
"We're actually removing them just to protect him (Musselman) from going to jail," Hansel declared.
Musselman later boasted to reporters that the Commandments would be "taken off the walls and stored," but added, "I'm sure they will be going back up one day."
Attorneys with Liberty Counsel, the Florida-based religious rights group that handled the legal defense for Pulaski, Harlan and McCreary counties, announced that they would withdraw an appeal of Coffman's ruling before the 6th Circuit Court. Erik Stanley, an attorney with the group, said that the odds of winning a new hearing "are pretty bleak," and that an effort will be made instead to find a compromise solution.
The events in Kentucky come twenty years after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in STONE v. GRAHAM, which struck down a state statute there calling for the display of the Commandments in public schools. Justices ruled that the Decalogue was primarily a religious document, and its display in public school classrooms violated the separation of church and state.
¶ The Indiana Civil Liberties Union announced yesterday that it would file suit in an effort to block a Ten Commandments monument from being erected on the lawn of the state house This follows passage of a law calling for the Ten Commandments to be shown in government buildings and public school classrooms throughout the state as a "stand alone" document. In Kentucky, supporters of the Commandments -- the so-called "Hang Ten" campaign -- attempted to secularize Decalogue displays by including historical documents.
In March, immediately after passage of the legislation, State Rep.
Brent Steele (R-Bedford) announced that he was proceeding with plans
to erect a nine-and-a-half-ton monument of the Commandments on the
South lawn of the capitol building. Reacting to word of the latest
constitutional challenge, Steele declared, "If the ACLU was around
when Moses was here, they'd have tried to get an injunction against
him writing the Ten Commandments."
Despite calling for the Commandments to be displayed alone, the Indianapolis Star-Tribune reports that the state house monument would also include copies of the Bill of Rights and the preamble to the U.S. Constitution.
"The government should not decide which faiths or faith traditions are valid and which are not," declared ICLU Executive Director John Krull during a press conference. Even some local clergy agreed. Rev. Kevin Armstrong of the United Methodist Church, who is also a plaintiff in the Indiana suit, told reporters: "To post a holy doctrine is in many ways to trivialize that doctrine. The Torah is not a lucky charm."
Other religious groups supporting the Indiana suit seemed to focus their complaints on the fact that by posting the Commandments, the government was endorsing a particular writing or version of the religious code. "At a news conference at Central Avenue United Methodist Church, Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh practitioners who stood in support of the ICLU said that the state has no right to designate one religion -- or one version of the Ten Commandments over another."
A spokesperson for Gov. Frank O'Bannon, who eagerly signed the Commandments statute after it cleared the legislature, denied that favoritism was a factor. "We're not picking any version of the Ten Commandments," he said. "We're accepting a gift from a benefactor."
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