Ten Commandments in Oklahoma: A Disappointing Victory

(Update: The original headline said "Texas" but it's Oklahoma.)

Yesterday the Supreme Court declined to hear the case from Stigler, Oklahoma, in which the Federal Court ordered a monument with the Ten Commandments removed from the courthouse lawn. While it is a victory that maintains our constitutional rights to a religion-free government, it's too bad that the Supreme Court didn't answer this case once and for all.

A number of other states actually urged the Court to take the case on – not because they had a specific pro/con agenda, but rather because they wanted a clear answer. These cases keep popping up, over and over. Some local Christian minister or ladies group or men's fraternal order will get the notion that everything that's wrong in the world is due to the fact that we don't have God and Jesus in our courtrooms, and they stick a Ten-Commandments monument on some government lawn, and then the state is faced with a big, expensive legal battle.

If the Supreme Court had taken the case, it would be resolved, once and for all. But for some reason, they issued an unsigned, one-line rejection, so the atheists won the battle, but the war goes on.

Once again, I'm reminded of how the religious right in this country has no appreciation of the very freedom that lets them worship as they please. If the founding fathers had injected religion into our government, it almost certainly wouldn't have been a Baptist version, nor would it have been Catholic. It would have been some sort of Puritan, Calvinist, Protestant religion that many of the very people putting up these unconstitutional monuments would find unacceptable.

They should be thankful to the atheists and the ACLU. By taking down the Ten Commandments, by taking religion out of government, the ACLU is helping to ensure that everyone, from the evangelical right to the most left-wing atheist, and every combination in between, has the right to worship as they please.