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La. AG Asks Court to Dismiss Suit Against New Ten Commandments Law


Monday, 05 August 2024 03:53 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/politics/ten-commandments-louisiana-law/2024/08/05/id/1175328/

 Louisiana’s attorney general announced Monday that she is asking a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit that seeks to overturn the state’s new law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public-school classroom by Jan. 1.

The suit was filed in June by parents of Louisiana public school children with various religious backgrounds who contend the law violates First Amendment language forbidding government establishment of religion and guaranteeing religious liberty. Proponents of the law argue that it is not solely religious but that the Ten Commandments have historical significance to the foundation of U.S. law.

As kids in Louisiana prepare to return to school this month, state officials presented large examples of posters featuring the Ten Commandments that Attorney General Liz Murrill argues “constitutionally comply with the law.” The Republican said she is not aware of any school districts that have begun to implement the mandate, as the posters “haven’t been produced yet.”

Murrill said the court brief being filed, which was not immediately available, argues that “the lawsuit is premature and the plaintiffs cannot prove that they have any actual injury.”

“That’s because they don’t allege to have seen any displays yet and they certainly can’t allege that they have seen any display of the Ten Commandments that violates their constitutional rights,” she added.

Murrill pointed to more than a dozen posters on display during Monday’s press conference to support her argument that the displays can be done constitutionally. Some of the posters featured quotes or images of famous figures — late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Martin Luther King Jr., Moses and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson.

No matter what the poster looked like, the main focal point was the Ten Commandments. Additionally, each display, at the bottom in small print, included a “context statement” that describes how the Ten Commandments “were a prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries.”

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed the legislation in June — making Louisiana the only state to require that the Ten Commandments be displayed in the classrooms of all public schools and state-funded universities. The measure was part of a slew of conservative priorities that became law this year in Louisiana.

When asked what he would say to parents who are upset about the Ten Commandments being displayed in their child’s classroom, the governor replied: “If those posters are in school and they (parents) find them so vulgar, just tell the child not to look at it.”

In an agreement reached by the court and state last month, the five schools specifically listed in the lawsuit will not post the commandments in classrooms before Nov. 15 and won’t make rules governing the law’s implementation before then. The deadline to comply, Jan. 1, 2025, remains in place for schools across the state.

Louisiana’s new law does not require school systems to spend public money on Ten Commandments posters. It allows the systems to accept donated posters or money to pay for the displays. Questions still linger about how the requirement will be enforced and what happens if there are not enough donations to fund the mandate.

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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The Ten Commandments Should Be Taught In Classrooms, Not Just Hung On The Wall


BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON | JUNE 21, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/06/21/the-ten-commandments-should-be-taught-in-classrooms-not-just-hung-on-the-wall/

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Louisiana made news this week for passing a law that mandates the Ten Commandments be displayed on the walls of every public-school classroom, including elementary schools, middle and high schools, and all public college classrooms.

The law defies a 1980 Supreme Court ruling that struck down a similar law in Kentucky, so this is certain to be challenged in court — a prospect supporters of the legislation are counting on. “I can’t wait to be sued,” said Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, who has been rather open about one of the purposes of the law: to challenge Supreme Court precedent on the First Amendment, specifically regarding the establishment clause, which for the past half-century has been used to excise nearly all formal recognition of religion from America’s public schools.

As a vehicle for challenging bad precedent, the law seems sufficient. But another purpose for it, at least according to Landry and other Republicans, is to instruct and mold students. “If you want to respect the rule of law,” the governor said, “you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses.”

This is true as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go very far. The idea that posting the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms will do anything to inculcate in students a respect for the rule of law, to say nothing of basic morality, is pure fantasy. You might say it’s necessary but not anywhere close to sufficient.

If you want to teach students to respect the rule of law and understand that just laws are based on objective moral standards, then you’re going to have to do more than post the Ten Commandments. You’re going to have to get to the root cause of why these things are not taught in public schools anymore — in fact the opposite is taught, that objective morality is oppressive and that the rule of law is systematically racist.

That means you’re going to have to do something about the teachers and administrators. It’s no secret that public school teachers all over the country tend to be far more left-wing than the average American and that no matter how small or conservative your community might be, its teachers and librarians and public-school administrators are among the most radical people in it. They are supported by powerful teacher’s unions and come out of an education and credentialing pipeline that exists to put left-wing ideologues in classrooms and school bureaucracies.

If you really want students to learn about the importance of the Ten Commandments — to say nothing of Christianity, Western philosophy, or the American founding — then you’d better be ready to take on the teachers’ unions and dismantle the teacher’s colleges and credentialing programs.

All of those things are of course well within the mandate of state legislatures. If the GOP-controlled Louisiana legislature has enough votes to mandate the Ten Commandments be displayed in every classroom in the state, surely, they have enough votes to shut down the teacher’s colleges and repeal the laws requiring that every public-school teacher be credentialed from such colleges.

It’s all well and good to pass laws with a view of changing Supreme Court precedent on establishment clause jurisprudence, but that doesn’t really strike at the root of the problem. Even if the Ten Commandments are allowed to remain on the walls of Louisiana classrooms, students aren’t going to learn anything about them unless they’re taught by teachers who themselves understand the importance of the Ten Commandments.

Therein lies the problem. The institutions that were once supposed to safeguard our education system have been taken over and transformed by leftist radicals who hate the very things we need them to teach our students — like respect for the rule of law or what the Ten Commandments are and where they came from.

What can be done about this? Plenty. Conservatives who actually care about such things are in the minority in America. They don’t wield a lot of institutional power. But Republicans, who count at least some conservatives among their ranks, currently control state legislatures and governors’ mansions (trifecta control) in 23 states. If the GOP in those states really wanted to fight back against the left’s control over public schools, it could push for the abolition of teachers’ colleges, or of credentialing requirements, or change them so that public school teachers need not be indoctrinated in Marxist ideology to teach in a Republican-controlled state.

And of course, much more than just that could be done — if the right wanted to fight back. The key thing is getting over this idea that we must preserve at all costs an outdated and fundamentally flawed notion of neutrality in our public institutions, that public schools, for example, must be silent about religion and morality even as they indoctrinate students in what amounts to a new religion of leftist political activism, bombarding them with lessons derived from critical race theory and LGBT ideology.

The left obviously doesn’t care about neutrality. Every institution and public space they are able to control is immediately used to push a very non-neutral message and agenda. Conservatives are the only ones who even pretend to care about neutrality anymore. It’s time to change that. Neutrality has always been a luxury good that only a religiously and culturally homogenous society could afford. Once the left weaponized it as part of a campaign to take over institutions, it became folly to adhere to it.

And yet most Republican officeholders still do. They should stop and get serious about getting the Ten Commandments back in public school — in the curriculum, not just posted on the wall.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pagan America: the Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

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Oklahoma judge orders Ten Commandments monument removed


waving flagUPDATED 4:01 PM CDT Sep 11, 2015

URL of the original posting site: http://www.koco.com/news/oklahoma-judge-orders-ten-commandments-monument-removed/35224400

State lawmakers file amendment to allow 10 Commandments monument on state grounds

An Oklahoma state representative filed a constitutional amendment Monday for the 2016 legislative session to remove the language that formed the basis for the ruling that stated that the 10 Commandments monument had to be removed from state Capitol grounds.

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) —An Oklahoma County judge has ordered that a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the state Capitol be removed within 30 days. District Judge Thomas Prince handed down the order Friday and gave state officials until October 12 to take down the 6-foot-tall granite monument. Prince issued the ruling after denying a motion filed by Attorney General Scott Pruitt’s office alleging that the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s June 30 order to remove the monument expressed an unconstitutional hostility toward religion.Pray for America 03cp 11

The court ruled the monument is a religious symbol and must be removed from the Capitol grounds because it violates a state constitutional ban on using public property for the benefit of religion.

The monument was authorized by the Legislature in 2009 and was erected in 2012. Oklahoma County judge has ordered that a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the state Capitol be removed within 30 days.

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How Liberalism Violates All 10 Commandments


Group-protests-Ten-Commandments-620×350

One of my readers, we’ll call him Moses, is the publisher of a mainstream newspaper in California. He wrote me the other day with an insightful observation. Since Moses works in one of the most liberal industries, in one of the most liberal states in the union, I won’t divulge his real name. We don’t want Moses tarred, feathered and banished to Oklahoma with a scarlet “C,” for Christian, emblazoned on his Harris Tweed sport coat. (Note: I have antipathy toward neither Oklahoma – I once lived there – nor Harris Tweed, though I do recommend against wearing Harris Tweed in Oklahoma. Especially in the summer.)

“Matt, think about this,” wrote Moses. “Every one of the Ten Commandments is explicitly violated by a principle of the left.”

And you know what? Slap me with a Red River catfish if Moses ain’t exactly right.

To be sure, as individuals, we’ve all violated many, if not most or all, of the 10 Commandments. In our fallen, sinful state we have an inherent propensity to rebel against God’s perfect and holy will for our lives. “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

Thank God for making available a path, narrow as it is, for eternal redemption and salvation through Christ Jesus.

Still, there is a difference between individual sins and a philosophical worldview that embraces those sins as a matter of course. Modern liberalism – “progressivism,” leftism, secularism, pick your poison – is built upon, by and for sin itself. Liberalism’s entire fabric is constructed by precept planks that are soaked through and stained by man’s arrogant rebellion against our Creator God.

In sum, liberalism is folly. It represents man’s futile attempt to disorder God’s natural order. It’s the unholy brainchild of God’s very first enemy, given by that enemy to God’s favored creation, us, with the sole purpose of destroying that creation.

Unfortunately, we’re all too happy to help. Liberalism just formalizes the process, making sin public policy.

Volumes could be penned on the myriad ways in which the central tenets of liberalism violate each of the Ten Commandments. The following is a much truncated analysis:

1. Thou Shalt Have No Gods Before Me.

At worst, liberalism denies the very existence of God in the forms of atheism and secularism, while, at best, it adopts that wonderfully “inclusive” blasphemy called religious pluralism. Pluralism presumes to give the false gods of false religions equal footing and denies Christ as He defined Himself: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Liberal “Christianity” falls under this category. It’s pluralism with a Christian stamp.

Secular humanism, liberalism’s prevailing false religion, denies God altogether and crowns man as king over himself and the measure of all things. “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”

2. Thou Shalt Not Make Graven Images.

We’re talking idolatry here. Liberalism is built on it. First, there’s literal idolatry (the worship of man-made idols, animals or inanimate objects) enjoyed by our New Age friends. And then there’s everything else: pantheistic environmentalism, the idols of “reproductive freedom,” “sexual liberation and equality,” etc.

Essentially, liberalism worships the created over the Creator. Liberalism also worships the sins of the flesh (see Commandments No. 1, 6 and 7).

Leftist State Religion

3. Thou Shalt Not Take the Lord’s Name in Vain.

  • To deny God is to take the Lord’s name in vain.
  • To deny God as He defines Himself is to take the Lord’s name in vain.
  • To misrepresent God, to call other gods God or to deny the deity of Christ is to take the Lord’s name in vain.

Liberalism does this and much more. Many liberals also mock Christ, Christianity and Christians. They revile the exclusive nature of Jesus, His commands and His faithful followers. They hate truth.

4. Remember to Keep Holy the Sabbath.

This one is a bit tricky as it is widely understood to fall under the Jewish ceremonial law, not the moral law – the old covenant, not the new. Christ Himself healed (worked) on the Sabbath. That said, many Christians still view Sunday as the Sabbath and do, indeed, keep it holy. Not all liberals (there are certainly liberal Jews), but liberalism at large denies the Sabbath any significance whatsoever, much less a holy significance.

5. Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother.

Liberalism seeks to supplant parents with “progressive” government. It diminishes parental rights and encourages children to rebel against the antiquated conventions held by mom and dad. It denies that children even need a mother and father and bristles at the “heteronormative” lack of “gender neutrality” inherent within the very words “mother and father.” The sin-centered, counter-biblical notion of “gay marriage” desecrates God’s design for true marriage and family and is intended to undermine these cornerstone institutions.

6. Thou Shalt Not Murder.

  • Abortion,
  • euthanasia,
  • “pro-choice,”
  • “reproductive rights,”
  • “death with dignity.”

Need I say more? Sacrosanct is the liberal rite of passage for a feminist mother to slaughter her own child in the womb. Fifty-five million dead babies later, liberals continue to worship at the pagan altar of “choice” (see Commandments No. 1 and 2).

7. Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery.

This means all sexual immorality as identified in the scriptures, to include

  • marital infidelity,
  • fornication,
  • homosexuality,
  • bestiality,
  • incest,
  • et al.

Liberalism, it seems, embraces all perversions of God’s design for human sexuality. Central to liberalism is moral relativism. When it comes to sex, you can do no wrong because there is no wrong.

8. Thou Shalt Not Steal.

With class warfare as its fuel, liberalism embraces the redistributionist philosophies of Marx and Engels. Liberalism thrives on theft. Like some completely incompetent and inefficient Robin Hood, liberal government steals from the middle class to give to the poor, thereby ensuring that liberal politicians remain in power and everyone else remains miserable.

9. Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness.

I give you Saul Alinsky from his Rules for Radicals:

“The third rule of ethics of means and ends is that in war the end justifies almost any means.”

As we’ve learned from Barack “you can keep your insurance” Obama, that includes lying. Liberals lie. That’s what they do. The ends justify the means. Bearing false witness about detractors of liberalism is par for the course.

10. Thou Shalt Not Covet.

Again, liberalism uses man’s inherent covetousness as the driving force behind all liberal economic policies. Creating a political climate of economic envy and class warfare gives liberal government the cover needed to take wealth from those who produce and redistribute it to those who don’t. Not only does liberalism violate this commandment, liberalism commands its adherents to do the exact opposite. “Thou shalt covet.”

As Satan “masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14), so, too, does liberalism masquerade as good. It’s deceptively packaged in flowery euphemisms and feel-good sound bites that promise “equality,” “tolerance” and libertine notions of “social justice.”

Yet, in reality, liberalism, in both philosophical and practical terms, simply signifies man’s predisposition to “call evil good and good evil.” It’s sin, all dolled up and doled out.

Ronald Reagan once quipped, “I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.”

If the Gipper had lived another couple decades, he might’ve found out.

 
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Texas gets dose of old-time laws Ten Commandments billboard campaign hits Liberty Hill
Once a common sight in public places across the nation, the Ten Commandments have increasingly become a rarity outside of homes and churches.
But one campaign aims to change that, and a Texas town has become the latest place to join the nationwide display of billboards that declare the biblical code of ethics.
Located on Highway 183 in Liberty Hill, Texas, the Ten Commandments billboard is headlined “Thus Saith the Lord” and lists each commandment.
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images.
“That shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”
The commandments billboard is intended to remind Americans of the Judeo-Christian ethics and morality found in the Bible that were once common throughout America.
The campaign was launched by WND co-founder Joseph Farah, who aims to place the Ten Commandments in front of more American eyes than ever before.
See the video about the effort:The message has been under attack for years from “civil rights” organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which pressed for their removal from schools, public buildings and even some churches.
Farah said the commandments are still relevant to American civil life.
“The purpose is to remind the public of the moral law to which all people are accountable whether they like it or not – even the ACLU,” Farah said. “America needs a set of social common denominators if we are to remain a self-governing society.”
He said no such document “has ever been produced by the hand of man.”
“For 3,000 years, empires have come and gone based on their adherence to the Ten Commandments. Millions of people have perished or been brought to salvation by God’s teachings about right and wrong. That’s what this campaign is all about – and I pray Americans will respond in partnership with me in dramatic style.”
Participate in the campaign now!
Other Ten Commandments billboards have been placed near Shubert, Pa.; Las Vegas; Nashville; Jacksonville, Fla.; Los Angeles; and Branson, Mo.
Here it is in Springfield, Mass.:See the sign in Nashville:Here’s the sign in Long Beach, Calif.:In Shubert, Pa.:In Branson, Mo.:The message in Lynwood, Calif., near Los Angeles:In Jacksonville, Fla.:An earlier Nashville sign:In Las Vegas:Farah said that with the help of donations, hundreds of billboards can be placed all over the country.
You can support the Ten Commandments Billboard Campaign with your financial donations in any amount or by helping to sponsor outdoor advertising in your own community.
See the video about the effort:“The problem is America is not limited to atheists, agnostics, cults and non-believers,” said Farah. “In fact, the biggest problem America has is with those who call themselves believers but who act no differently than the worldliest individuals on the planet. You can call these people backslidden. You can call them false converts. Or you can call them undiscipled, nominal believers. What they all have in common is they are not in obedience to God. They are not even trying to follow the most basic moral law, as Jesus and the prophets all instructed.”
America has never needed a campaign like this so badly, he said.
“The Ten Commandments have been banished from our schools,” said Farah. “They’ve been banished from our courtrooms and law schools. They’ve even been banished from some of our churches and synagogues. Look what has become of America since. Maybe it’s time to roll them out on highways and byways, in big cities and small towns so no one is without excuse as to the moral code the One True God gave us to govern ourselves.”
Farah and WND are providing seed money for the launch and publicity and hope that Jews and Christians alike – all worshipers of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – will donate money to the campaign to erect the messages on public billboards from coast to coast.
“I don’t know what the result will be,” said Farah. “But I know America badly needs a reminder of who guides the universe and the affairs of men and what He requires of us all. Americans need awareness of their sins before they can repent of them. And until we repent of our sins, America’s fate has been cast to the wind. America needs the Ten Commandments.”
You can donate to the campaign online at the WND Superstore or write checks to WND with a notation “Ten Commandments campaign.” Checks can be sent to WND.com Inc., 2020 Pennsylvania Ave, N.W., Suite 351, Washington, D.C. 20006.
“If you’re concerned about the future of America, heed God’s word in II Chronicles 7:14,” said Farah: “It says, ‘If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.’ But if we don’t understand our sin, which is defined by the Ten Commandments, how can we turn from our wicked ways? And how will God hear us? And how will He heal our land?”
Contact WND to help support the campaign to post the Ten Commandments throughout America.
WND believes the Ten Commandments are the glue that hold society together. If they are forgotten, dismissed or ignored, America will cease being a self-governing nation, as its Founding Fathers intended.
Listen to what others have said and written about the Ten Commandments:

    •  “The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount contain my religion.” – John Adams
    •  “If God would have wanted us to live in a permissive society He would have given us Ten Suggestions and not Ten Commandments.” – Zig Ziglar
    •  “We might come closer to balancing the budget if all of us lived closer to the Commandments and the Golden Rule.” – Ronald Reagan
    •  “One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.” – Christopher Hitchens (noted atheist)
    •  “The Ten Commandments are the divinely revealed law.” – Roy Moore
    •  “Congress should pass legislation to remove from the federal courts their jurisdiction to hear these outrageous challenges to the Ten Commandments and the Pledge of Allegiance.” – Phyllis Schlafly
    •  “Man has made 32 million laws since the Commandments were handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai … but he has never improved on God’s law.” – Cecil B. DeMille
    •  “I believe if more American children read the Ten Commandments and are taught what they mean, they will predictably engage in less crime.” – Gary Bauer

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