fter hours of emotional testimony, the Elkhart, Indiana School Board last night rejected a proposal to display the Ten Commandments in public schools along with historical documents. The 6-1 vote came after a local Ten Commandments committee had spent several months gathering 2,000 signatures on a petition. Although concerns about possible litigation were raised if the measure passed, the former Elkhart City Attorney, Paul Eash, told the board that he was willing to defend the Commandments at a special reduced rate if the matter went to court. State Sen. Joe Zakas indicated in a letter that the Indiana Attorney General's office would also help the school district if it were sued.

   That didn't stop critics, though from speaking out.

   Mike Suetkamp, State Director for American Atheists, took aim at Commandments supporters and said, "The motivation of these people has nothing to do with history ... it has to do with promoting their beliefs over others."

   Suetkamp countered claims that the Decalogue is part of a Christian fabric in American culture, and challenged a statement made by a local minister that the Founding Fathers were Christians who supported Christianity in schools.

   "To post these (the Commandments) as a moral law is wrong," Suetkamp told the school board. He added that many of the Founders were, in fact, deists, and said that the Commandments violated the spirit of the Bill of Rights.

   Suetkamp has been involved in a legal action to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the front of the Elkhart City Hall. In December, 1999, U.S. District Judge Allen Sharp ruled in a 49-page decision that the 6-foot-high granite Commandments display did not violate the separation of church and state, and was "strictly neutral" in that it was part of a larger presentation of legal themes. Mr. Suetkamp is appealing the verdict.

   Supporters of the commandments scheme were galvanized by legislation enacted by the Indiana General Assembly during its last session. The new law permits local governments and school boards to post the Commandments along with historical documents which presumably 'secularize' the display. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, ruled in the 1980 STONE v. GRAHAM decision that a Kentucky statute requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms had no secular purpose, and violated the Establishment Clause of the constitution. The justices opined that "The preeminent purpose for posting the Ten Commandments on schoolroom walls is plainly religious in nature," and noted that contrary to claims by some that the Decalogue is "not religious," the Commandments "are undeniably a sacred text in the Jewish and Christian faith, and no legislative recitation of a supposed secular purpose can blind us to that fact."

   Supporters told the school board that the Commandments were somehow part of American history, and even suggested that displaying them in schools would reverse an alleged moral decline. The head of the Elkhart Christian Center praised the Decalogue as a tool in building an orderly community. Pastor Michael Muccio told board members that since the Supreme Court decisions in the early 1960s which removed mandatory prayer and Bible verse recitation from schools, the nation has been in moral crisis.

   "Things are getting out of control," another Commandments booster argued. "I'm in favor of posting them. We have to do something." Critics of the proposal argued that displaying the Ten Commandments would lead to intolerance, promoting one religion over another, and possible legal problems. Susan Dry told the board, "Any student who does not support the posting of the Ten Commandments will be subject to harassment."

   "Non-Christians are a minority," she said, "and we have to be protected from the tyranny of the majority."

   Attorney Glenn Duncan reminded fellow board members that fighting an expected lawsuit against Commandments display would take time and money. "That cost means that this system would have to bear that cost. I do have a responsibility to the taxpayers of this community."

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