Oklahoma Removes Ten Commandments Monument

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Oklahoma Removes Ten Commandments Monument


By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑAOCT. 6, 2015

Photo

Workers late Monday moved a Ten Commandments monument from the grounds of the Oklahoma Capitol in Oklahoma City. CreditSue Ogrocki/Associated Press
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• Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (also known as Pastafarians) demanded that the state accept their monuments for display, too.
  
  Last year, a man drove his car into the Ten Commandments monument, breaking it to pieces. State Representative Mike Ritze, a Republican who paid for the original, also paid for a replacement.
  
  In a statement Tuesday, Mr. Ritze said, “We will focus our efforts on restoring the monument to its rightful place.”
  
  The state Office of Management and Enterprise and the Highway Patrol decided it was best for the monument to be moved late at night, with few people around.
  
  “The patrol had been hearing chatter that concerned them,” said John Estus, a spokesman for the management office. “They were concerned that groups with strong opinions on one side or another might try to interfere.”
  
  The few protesters who showed up for the removal kept their distance. “There was a little hooting and hollering, but the Highway Patrol did not have to engage with anybody,” Mr. Estus said.
  
  Oklahoma is the latest in a string of states, cities and school districts to grapple with whether government display of the Ten Commandments violates the First Amendment’s prohibition on any “law respecting an establishment of religion,” or similar provisions in state constitutions. Courts have prohibited displays for religious purposes, while allowing those for broader cultural reasons, leading to mixed results in legal challenges.
  
  In 1980, the Supreme Court struck down a Kentucky law requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in every public school classroom. In a pair of rulings issued on the same day in 2005, the court ruled against Ten Commandments displays in Kentucky but in favor of a display in Texas. In 2009, the court ruled that the city of Pleasant Grove, Utah, which had a Ten Commandments monument, among others, was not required to accept one from a religion called Summum.
  
  The most contentious case involved Roy S. Moore, the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, who had a Ten Commandments monument installed at the courthouse in 2001. Federal courts ruled that the monument had to go, but Justice Moore refused, so the other justices on the state Supreme Court ordered it taken away in 2003.
  
  A state judicial panel removed Mr. Moore from office over the episode, but he won election as chief justice again in 2012, based largely on his support for the Ten Commandments display.
  
  In Oklahoma, the Legislature and the governor enacted a law in 2009 to approve the monument, and it was installed three years later. But on June 30, the state Supreme Court ruled that the display violated the state constitution. A county judge gave the state until Monday to move it.
  
  
• http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/07/u...ments-monument.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur

 

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