Disputes Over Ten Commandments Grow More Intense

Amid the rolling hills of rural southwest Ohio, four high schools display identical sets of five monuments placed neatly in front of their new buildings.

The tombstone-like monuments highlight historic legal documents, such as the Declaration of Independence and the Magna Carta.

But the monument in the center, with the Ten Commandments etched in granite, is the one that has caused controversy. School officials say the monuments--donated by a private group of ministers and lay people--belong there and have appealed a June District Court decision declaring their presence unconstitutional.

“Our belief is that the monuments are there not primarily as a religious statement, but as a historical reminder of our system of law and government in the United States and to show that it has very deep-seated roots in biblical times,” said Roy Hill, outgoing superintendent of the Adams County/Ohio Valley School District.

The Ohio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union disagrees, and sued on behalf of a community activist who lives in the area and is offended by the monuments.

“They’re undeniably religious,” said Raymond Vasvari, legal director of the ACLU chapter. “They are sacred texts to believing Christians and believing Jews. They are not theological ‘Hints from Heloise.’ They are supposed to be the revealed word of God.”

Two years ago, about a dozen legal cases were working their way through the courts regarding the posting of the Ten Commandments on public property--schools and parks, even city halls. Now the number has risen to about 20, legal experts say.

“It may be that both sides are getting more aggressive about litigation,” said Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Texas in Austin. “You’re not going to get a national consensus on this.”

He said legal uncertainty lingers because the one Supreme Court decision addressing the matter, Stone vs. Graham in 1980, dealt specifically with public schools. It declared unconstitutional a Kentucky law that required the commandments be posted in classrooms.

Another catalyst for the lawsuits, Laycock said, was publicity about Chief Justice Roy Moore of Alabama’s Supreme Court, who gained wide attention for putting the Ten Commandments in his courtroom when he was a circuit court judge.

More recently, Moore has drawn headlines--and a lawsuit--for placing a 2 1/2-ton Ten Commandments monument in the lobby of the state judicial building.

The Rev. Ken Johnson, who founded Adams County for the Ten Commandments, said of Moore: “He’s my hero.”

Johnson, along with other pro-commandments activists in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Tennessee, is forming a network to foster continued court action to support the posting of the biblical laws in public places. In his county, Johnson said, the monument sends a “signal” to students, teachers and community members.

“We wanted them for just a good moral code to show respect for God and respect toward men,” said Johnson, who is pastor of a United Methodist church in nearby Seaman.

Vasvari praises recent decisions against such monuments in the same states where Johnson and other leaders are working to keep them up.

“It does say something when you have ... nine district courts, in rapid succession in a variety of circumstances, handing down the same ruling,” he said.

Recent defeats in court have not dissuaded monument supporters.

Frank Manion, senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, is defending the Adams County school district and has urged its leaders to add the four most recent monuments to possibly bolster their case.

He’s also representing commandment supporters in eight other cases, including Judge James DeWeese of Richland County, Ohio, who has appealed a district court decision in hopes of keeping a poster of the commandments in a gilded frame on the wall of his courtroom.

Manion said judges’ recent rulings simultaneously recognize the biblical laws as “an important historical factor” while rejecting their particular placement in public venues.

“The question is, how do you find out until you get sued and go through the whole legal process whether your context is appropriate?”

Adding to the confusion, he said, are conflicting decisions by appellate courts.

“The same monument is illegal in Elkhart [Ind.] and Indianapolis, but it’s legal in Denver and Salt Lake City under the same provision of the Constitution,” Manion said.

On the basis of recent court decisions, some of the monuments have come down. At least one, in Chester County, Pa., which dated to the early 1900s, was recently covered up, pending appeals.

One of the newer court cases covers a LaCrosse, Wis., monument donated to the city by a fraternal organization in the 1960s and placed in a park.

Marty Kurian, manager of LaCrosse Aerie 1254 of the Fraternal Order of Eagles, said his organization had donated the monument in honor of local residents after their sand-bagging efforts during a serious flood.

But a suit filed July 1 by the Freedom from Religion Foundation prompted the City Council to vote about a week later to sell the property to that fraternal group.

The first commandment alone--”Thou shalt have no other gods before me”--is what prompted the lawsuit, said Anne Gaylor, president of the Madison, Wis.-based foundation.

“In our country, we are free to have any god we like, as many as we like or none at all if that’s what we prefer,” Gaylor said. “Government should be neutral in matters of religion, and you are hardly neutral if you are telling the community to worship and which god to worship.”