These articles about this issue have failed to give the historical background of the OK constitutional provision used by their Supreme Court to order the removal of the Ten Commandments. The OK court used what is called a Blaine Amendment. During the Post-Civil War era the dominant WASPs became concerned about public money going to Catholic Schools. Let us say the Protestant Establishment wanted children to go to public schools which at that time taught a lowest common denominator Protestantism, for example, reading from the King James version of the Bible. (The OK monument is an modern day example of this as it is the Protestant version.) So President Grant and Republican Congressman James Blaine proposed a US Constitutional Amendment to ban the use of tax money and land for sectarian purposes including schools. The Federal Amendment failed to get out of Congress but all but 11 states passed a Blaine Amendment in their constitutions. Lawsuits have successful stopped school vouchers from going to sectarian schools based on Blaine Amendments. It seems the OK Supreme Court made the correct decision since the amendment clearly states, “No public...property shall ever be...used, directly or indirectly, for the use, benefit, or support of any sect, church, denomination, or system of religion..” The monument on public property and the use of the Protestant 10 Commandments clearly violated the language of the amendment. I do have a macabre joy in seeing this blowback from what was passed as a blatantly anti-Catholic law. The politicians of OK had plenty of time to revoke this amendment. Traditionalists, and I consider myself one, better get ready for the weapons used in the past to come back to bit us in the arse.
Don't Catholics and Jews share a common heritage with the same 10 Commandments? I understand the Doxey wording may differ somewhat with the KJV, but isn't the meaning the same?
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The ten commandments are no part of any ‘religion,’ nor ‘sect.’
Religions, and sects are completely apart from God, as they are the creations of men.
The commandments are from God.
The OK court erred in deep ignorance.
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The text clearly supports their decision, but haven't we entered an era where what the law actually means is irrelevant?
Had I been on the court, I would have denied removal simply because it pisses off all the right people.