Law

A judge on Wednesday struck down a 2006 state law that required the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security to stress "dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the commonwealth." ...

Homeland Security officials have been required for three years to credit "Almighty God" in their official reports and post a plaque with similar language at the state’s Emergency Operations Center in Frankfort....

"This is the very reason the Establishment Clause was created: to protect the minority from the oppression of the majority," (Judge Thomas Wingate) wrote. "The commonwealth’s history does not exclude God from the statutes, but it had never permitted the General Assembly to demand that its citizens depend on Almighty God."

State Rep. Tom Riner, D-Louisville, a Southern Baptist minister, placed the "Almighty God" language into a homeland security bill without much notice.

Riner said Wednesday that he is unhappy with the judge’s ruling. The way he wrote the law, he said, it did not mandate that Kentuckians depend on God for their safety, it simply acknowledged that government without God cannot protect its citizens.

Reversing a lower court, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously declared unconstitutional the eight-foot-tall religious display, which was erected at the local courthouse in 2004 after a campaign by a local minister and his supporters.

This decision should send a clear message to politicians and religious leaders: Thou shalt not mix church and state, observed the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. "Our courthouses should focus on the Constitution and civil law, not religious law."

Why this is even a controversy is beyond me. Let's review the Ten Commandments and see just why this is clearly a violation of Church and State (keeping in mind that these 10 vital 'laws' are not even delivered consistently in the Bible or agreed upon across various denominations):

1. You shall have no other gods before Me.
2. You shall not make for yourself a carved image--any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
3. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.
4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
5. Honor your father and your mother.
6. You shall not murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.

The first four Commandments have absolutely zero place in a court room and are explicitly set against many fundamental freedoms guaranteed in this nation. Numbers five and ten offer nothing that a court of law can even consider and provide nothing that a legislature could use to be codified into laws at all. Six and eight are already covered by laws in most every jurisdiction, so we're just adding redundancy here. Seven is not illegal and has no place in the state's hands except as already covered in divorce laws. Number nine is vague and in its legal sense is already covered by perjury and fraud laws.

There is absolutely no reason we need this arbitrary set of rules placed anywhere. Nearly half codify religious intolerance and impose a fear of the invisible man-in-the-sky, and the others, where needed, are already covered by existing laws. Sad that in the 21st Century so many people are so ignorant as to believe this idiotic set of 'do nots' is somehow the most important set of rules to follow. What about rape? Incest? Drunk driving? How about terrorism that doesn't kill people? Torture? Aren't there worse 'sins' than coveting your neighbor's donkey?

As stated above, there isn't even agreement on which ten are the most important. Moses went up the mountain three times, bringing back different commandments each time. The first was an oral account, followed by two different trips where he brought back engraved tablets. The latter two sets of rules are vastly different and offer incredibly strange priorities for the Jewish faith (and later Christian faith). Take a look for yourself here (hat tip to Dan Barker's book: Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists for inspiration, which I'm currently reading and will review in the next week)