Keep church and state separate

Last October, a U.S. district court ruled that the display of a Ten Commandments monument at the Alabama Judicial Building violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The monument's foremost patron, Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court, installed the monument in July of 2001. Moore is no stranger to the church/state limelight; he gained renown in 1995 when he refused a court order to remove a Ten Commandments plaque from his courtroom. \nMoore argued that the Ten Commandments monument depicts the "moral foundation of law." He referenced other Ten Commandments displays in government buildings -- most notably a mural in the U.S. Supreme Court building that depicts Moses holding the two tablets. But the degree to which Moore's monument proselytizes sets it apart from the others. \nU.S. District Judge Myron H. Thompson, the judge who made the ruling, pointed out that the Ten Commandment displays in other government buildings are often parts of larger displays and are not monuments to God. \n"In a mural on the United States Supreme Court building," Thompson writes in his judicial report, "the Ten Commandments are displayed as blank tablets, and held by Moses sitting amongst many other historical lawgivers."\nMoore's 5,280-pound granite display, on the other hand, is a religious monument. Thompson writes, "Its sloping top and the religious air of the tablets unequivocally call to mind an open Bible resting on a podium." Unlike the other displays, the monument is not part of a larger secular context. As Thompson argues, nothing about the monument highlights the secular significance of the Ten Commandments. \nIf the monument's appearance does not suitably attest to its endorsement of a particular religion, Moore's words on the issue certainly do. In his article "Religion In the Public Square," published by Cumberland Law Review, Moore writes, "By leaving religion undefined, the Court has opened the door to the erroneous assumption that, under the Establishment Clause, religion could include Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and whatever might occupy in man's life a place parallel to that filled by God, or even Secular Humanism, which might be defined as man's belief in his own supremacy and sufficiency." \nMoore reiterated his beliefs at the trial. Moore said it is the Judeo-Christian God who gives us our freedoms, including the freedom to believe in whatever faith we choose. For this reason, Moore argues, the Ten Commandments are inextricably tied to our notion of law, and thus the monument has a rightful place in the Alabama judicial building. Thankfully, Thompson rejected Moore's interpretation of the Establishment Clause in favor of a more meaningful reading that actually guarantees religious liberty instead of purporting that that liberty is guaranteed only by virtue of the supremacy of one particular religion.\nA religious monument has no place in a government building, just as the words "under God" have no place in the Pledge of Allegiance. Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State and a United Church of Christ minister, choicely said of the Ten Commandments, "Many Americans revere the moral code. However, it is not the job of the government to single out one religious code and hold it up as the state's favorite. Promoting the Ten Commandments is a task for our houses of worship, not government officials"