A television cameraman tapes Jackson County Manager Al Crace viewing a Ten Commandments display Wednesday in the county's Administration Building. Jeff Blake/Staff
Posted on 10/10/2003 12:53:21 AM PDT by honeygrl
Jackson County Commissioners decided in a 4-1 vote Monday night to put up a Ten Commandments display in the Jackson County Administrative Building.
Commissioner Stacey Britt proposed the display as a means of supporting the Barrow County Commission, currently embroiled in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union claiming that a Ten Commandments display within the Barrow County Courthouse is unconstitutional.
But the Jackson County display will have a significant difference from the Barrow County display.
While the Ten Commandments are displayed solo in a breezeway within the Barrow County Courthouse, the Jackson County display will hang alongside several other historical documents, including Hammurabi's Code, the Magna Carta, the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the Preamble to the Constitution, said County Manager Al Crace.
Commission Chairman Harold Fletcher had proposed the other documents in an amendment to Britt's motion.
Fletcher said he based his proposal on case law, saying that several courts have upheld displays of the Ten Commandments as long as they served a historical or secular purpose.
Recently, in a West Chester, Pa., case, a federal appeals court in Philadelphia permitted a small, 83-year-old plaque of the Ten Commandments to remain on a courthouse wall because its historic context outweighed its religious content.
And in Pittsburgh, citing the West Chester precedent, a federal judge allowed a similar 85-year-old plaque of the Ten Commandments to remain on the wall of the Allegheny County Courthouse.
Commissioner Emil Beshara voted against the motion.
''In today's litigious climate it's almost inviting a lawsuit,'' he said.
Beshara said a potential lawsuit's burden on taxpayers worried him, saying that even within a ''historical context'' displaying the Ten Commandments put the county on shaky legal ground.
Besides supporting Barrow County's decision, Britt said that the display validated the beliefs of the majority of the county's citizens, including his own.
''I thought it was the right thing to do; it's what I believe in,'' he said.
Crace said the display would not be elaborate, with the Jackson County government wanting to spend no more than a couple of hundred dollars on it.
Currently, only the Ten Commandments are displayed. The commission is currently in the process of getting the other historical documents.
Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Thursday, October 9, 2003.
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