Submitted by Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
U.S. District Court Judge James Parker of the New Mexico District ruled a monument displaying the Ten Commandments must be removed from the Bloomfield, New Mexico City Hall.
A lawsuit was filed in the district on behalf of two members of the Wicca Religion by the American Civil Liberties Union against the city. Judge Parker’s ruling stated the city had violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to United States Constitution.
In his ruling, Judge Parker wrote in part:
“…The Ten Commandments monument is government speech regulated by the Establishment Clause because the Ten Commandments monument is a permanent object located on government property and it is not part of a designated public forum open to all on equal terms…In view of the circumstances surrounding the context, history, and purpose of the Ten Commandments monument, it is clear that the City of Bloomfield has violated the Establishment Clause because its conduct in authorizing the continued display of the monument on City property had the primary or principal effect of endorsing religion.”
A statement from the ACLU read in part:
“This decision is a victory for the First Amendment’s protections against government endorsed religion,” said ACLU of New Mexico Executive Director Peter Simonson. “We firmly support the right of individuals, religious groups, and community associations to publicly display religious monuments, but the government should not be in the business of picking which sets of religious beliefs belong at city hall. We hope that the Ten Commandments monument will find a new home on private property in the city where people can continue to enjoy it.”
“Bloomfield residents come from many different religious traditions, and the government should never discriminate amongst them by lifting up one above the other,” said ACLU of New Mexico Legal Director Alexandra Freedman Smith. “Not only does this monument run afoul of the First Amendment, but it sends an exclusionary message to members of the community who do not subscribe to the particular set of religious beliefs inscribed there. The government belongs to us all, and it should not marginalize community members because of their faith.”
There have been several cases filed on similar merits such as in the Sixth District and there are more likely to come forth, likely commensurate with any newly constructed monuments. Some backers of the monuments believe that the United States was founded on such values and, alternatively, the commandments are also secular tenets benefiting a peaceful society.
For further reading:
The lawsuit’s complaint may be read HERE (pdf)
The court decision may be read HERE (pdf)
By Darren Smith
Sources:
Jurist
American Civil Liberties Union
The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.
Squeeky, there is no difference, both are belief systems. I’m not putting a value on one above the other. You are, that doesn’t swing it in a Democratic society.
Actually, I think it wouldn’t be bad, perhaps a bit confusing, but allow all religions to be able to express their laws on the Courthouse lawn….up next a Sharia Law machete, to remind citizens to not steal.
@annie
No, Annie, it does matter. Pretending there is no difference between the two is a rhetorical device used by leftist to attack conventional mores and the underlying confidence of the majority. I explained the differences above and you are not addressing that explanation by waving your arms, ignoring it, and making baseless declarations.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky, for your edification and mine ’cause I didn’t know it, but Paganism is older than Christianity. Satanism falls under the umbrella of paganism.
If having the Ten Commandments on display is an unconstitutional endorsement of a specific religion or belief then wouldn’t the removal of them also be an unconstitutional endorsement of a specific religion or belief?
Old religion or new religion. Doesn’t matter, it’s someone belief system. If you do accept one you are open to lawsuits just like this one. You are opening up the possibility of any kooky religion asserting itself into our government. Yes indeed it IS.
The 10 Commandments is not equivalent in any way to the 11 Satanic Commandment. One is 3500 years old, the express cornerstone of 2 or 3 major religions, the tacit cornerstone of civilization, and relatively iconic in America. The other is some crap made up by a nut in the last few years and unknown by the great majority of Americans.
We are not really faced with a “if you accept one, you have to accept the other ” choice.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof this is the rest of the “the establishment”clause
The Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth
by Anton Szandor LaVey
© 1967
Do not give opinions or advice unless you are asked.
Do not tell your troubles to others unless you are sure they want to hear them.
When in another’s lair, show him respect or else do not go there.
If a guest in your lair annoys you, treat him cruelly and without mercy.
Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal.
Do not take that which does not belong to you unless it is a burden to the other person and he cries out to be relieved.
Acknowledge the power of magic if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained.
Do not complain about anything to which you need not subject yourself.
Do not harm little children.
Do not kill non-human animals unless you are attacked or for your food.
When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop. If he does not stop, destroy him.
*************************************
It was a good ruling, because ya know the next thing written in stone and displayed on the Courthouse lawn could be this.
Reblogged this on Centinel2012 and commented:
This ruling like many of its kind are not a correct interpretation of the the Establishment clause! We have gotten away for the principles that made this a great country — what will come next is unknown (NAS and DHS) what we do know is that its not going to be the same country we grew up in!
Anyone who has studied the US Constitution and the rest of the founding documents knows that the “establishment” clause was mean to prevent the Federal Government from creating a state (Federal) religion as existing in most of the European countries. If that was not the case then the founders themselves would have done what we are doing now over tow hundred years later. This changes only goes back some 60/70 years when the progressive movement was trying to change the mores of the citizens so they could change the form of the government as Montesquieu wrote in 1750 In Defence of “The Spirit of the Laws” The purpose for this is to establish a ruling class based on the principles of Marxism so that the country can be properly run by the intellectuals not the mobs of the “lower” classes such as you and I.
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The problem isn’t that the Ten Commandments are religious, it’s that they are meaningless. They may as well post the names of the seven dwarfs. People have seen them their entire lives and still cannot recite them, much less follow them.
Surely those who decide how to decorate government buildings can come up with something more meaningful like the Bill of Rights, the Geneva conventions against torture, Eisenhower’s comments about the military industrial complex, Comments defining war crimes from Nuremberg? Perhaps the Ten Commandments are posted because they are meaningless. Meaningful ideas would be even more controversial.
the last time I checked, the 10 commandments are on display in various places inside the U.S. Supreme Court. and the last time I checked, the U.S Supreme Court building is a government building. so the decision does not make sense.
The SCOTUS is exempt from the canons of judicial ethics too. Do you think that Justice Thomas should be allowed to commit perjury on his forms for ten years and get away with it? Then to compound this crime, he failed to recuse himself from the Citizens United decision in which his wife had an interest and he hid over half a million dollars she earned from the plaintiffs.
Which ten commandments are displayed? The Protestant ones or the Catholic ones? Since we now have a majority of Catholics on the SCOTUS, I would imagine that they will correct the ones there now.
Which Ten Commandments did they establish, since there is a difference between the King James version and the Catholic one? My guess is that the Catholic one was not the one posted, even though the majority of the electorate is Catholic and the Protestants imposed THEIR version on the monument.
They should find someone to sell the small patch of land which contains the monument to.
OT
Gov. Perry indicted on two felony counts by Grand Jury convened by state special prosecutor as ordered by state judge.
Do they have the Death Penalty in that state? The Sixth Commandment would be an insult to the judges and juries which send men or women to their death. Thou Shalt Not Kill. That is a nice phrase to have in front of a courthouse if you are defending a human being in a capital murder case. “Capital murder” means that someone makes political capital out of killing another human– the prosecutor, judge, cops, county government. They need to post the Ten Commandments in Ferguson in front of that convenience store which just got broken into and looted by the mob. Here is the Eleventh Commandment in Ferguson: “Hands Up. Don’t Shoot. We gotta loot.”
Yeah, I ‘d spend a lot of time worrying about those for whom “thou shalt not steal” and “thou shalt not kill” is an “exclusionary message.”
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Sadly, this is where tolerance gets you. Next thing the tolerated are dictating to you.
Reblogged this on Citizens, not serfs and commented:
So much for religious tolerance.