Oregon Magazine

The Ten Commandments Exterminators
By Hans Zeiger

Amendment I (U.S. Constitution)

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

OMED: "make no law respecting an establishment of religion" means "there shall be no official state church." America is mathematically a Christian nation, but there is no law that officially designates it as such, or provides defacto designation by way of legal preference or specific-faith-limited public financial support. Having experienced the Church of England, which is a nice religion as long as you can't be tortured by the government for not being a member, the founding fathers didn't have a good opinion of theocracies. (One-legal-religion nations.)

Next, "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" means a citizen can practice his faith. Build a church, wear religious garments, etc. With respect to the column which follows this introductory text, it means citizens cannot be turned away from a public place, like our parks, courthouses or government-funded schools because they display a religious symbol like a cross, or say grace over their lunch -- as long as such activity does not infringe on the Constitutional rights of other citizens, religious or secular.

An example of a religious expression which infringes on the rights of other citizens would be when a Moslem shoots a Christian because the Moslem's version of Islam rates anybody who isn't a Moslem as an "infidel." Another would be when a Moslem woman wears a full burqa while driving an automobile. By limiting her field of vision, she is endangering other people.

A teacher wearing a Christian cross is not unconstitutional. Suppression of this sort of expression happens all the time these days, but it is a violation of our First Amendment free-exercise rights. The liberal members of the Supreme Court don't care.

There is no Constitutional "freedom from religion" right. It has been invented by the people Hans Zeiger doesn't like very much. Young Zeiger's complaint, in the text below, is therefore well-founded. All he has left out is the reason the founding fathers wrote the Bill of Rights: to specifically set certain legal concepts, including the ones mentioned here, above and beyond the control of government.

Now, to the text of Zeiger's column ...

The Ten Commandment exterminators are out in full force. All around America, public displays of the Ten Commandments are the object of lawsuits, ACLU threats, city council battles, and civil disobedience. As Slate magazine writes, “It’s starting to be the Summer of Decalogues.”

The most notable case is that of Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore whose 5,300 pound Ten Commandments monument in the State Supreme Court building was ordered to be removed by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals last month. On July 22, Moore announced that he will appeal the decision directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Christian activist groups have rallied to the defense of the Alabama commandments display with calls for non-violent civil resistance to preserve the monument if necessary.

In Kansas City, Kansas, the unified county/city council voted 8-0 on Thursday to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the Wyandotte County Courthouse after the American Civil Liberties Union threatened a major lawsuit. The commandments have been located at the courthouse for over forty years when the Fraternal Order of Eagles donated them to the county.

Another ACLU fulmination is in the works at Wesley Bolin Plaza east of the Arizona state capitol in Phoenix. A monument of the Ten Commandments, donated in 1964, sits on state park land. The administrator of the park says she will advise the governor to keep the historical marker in place. And if they do, the ACLU will sue.

In Miles City, Montana, a group of citizens continues to protest a three-year old ACLU consent decree to remove a Ten Commandments plaque at the Custer County Courthouse. The ACLU wrote a letter to the county attorney last week threatening a second lawsuit if the commandments remain.

In Everett, Washington, a resident named Jesse Card called on Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) when he became “offended” by a Ten Commandments display in front of the Everett Police Department that was also donated by the Fraternal Order of Eagles in 1959. On July 24, AU filed suit in federal court, stating that the monument "conveys a message of state endorsement of religion in general, and a specific religious viewpoint in particular, and thereby ostracizes citizens who do not conform to the religious beliefs that the monument expresses."

Who, in their right mind, could possibly be offended by the Ten Commandments?

It isn’t because the Ten Commandments are discriminatory of religious beliefs that the Left is taking the time and effort to pry the decalogue off of war memorials, courthouses, and town hall buildings. The world’s three largest religions – Christianity, Judaism, and Islam – teach and practice the Ten Commandments, as do smaller religions like Mormonism and Jehovah Witness.

The real reason why the ACLU and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State are so aggressive about taking down the Ten Commandments is because they’re interested in breaking the Ten Commandments. The atheists and moral relativists who work for and contribute to the anti-commandment cause are itching to open up the floodgates of sin and ride the waves of dark, sticky, smelly immoral muck as it oozes over the cities and plains of America.

In other words, the people who are offended by the Ten Commandments are the ones who are eager to make it easier to violate them. They may not be murderers, rapists, and robbers, but they probably want greater leeway in the sentencing of thugs. They probably don’t cheat on taxes, but they didn’t mind when a president lied in court. They don’t want you to have a gun, but they don’t care about criminals with guns. They’re the same folks who want to trash the fifth and seventh commandments about the family by declaring a right to sodomy and doing away with traditional marriage.

The Left doesn’t want us to worship God and follow His commandments, but they would like us to worship the gods of ultra-tolerance on the graven altar of moral relativism.

America needs the Ten Commandments. Our civil laws, our culture, our families, our communities, our freedom – all of it depends on a moral law that is higher than the devices of mortal man. As the Father of the Constitution, James Madison said, “We stake the future of this country on our ability to govern ourselves under the principles contained in the Ten
Commandments.”

In the Old Testament, touching the ark of the covenant containing the commandments was forbidden for non-Levites and unclean Levites. Even today in America, the Ten Commandments are sacred. The Ten Commandments exterminators amongst us ought to leave their hands off of
the moral law of God.

Hans Zeiger, 18, is a Seattle Times columnist, activist, and student leader. As an Eagle Scout, he is president of the Scout Honor Coalition. He can be contacted at hanszeiger@yahoo.com.