Canis lupus hominis

From WDBJ:

The ACLU of Virginia today objected to a decision by the Giles County School Board to re-post the Ten Commandments in public schools, and says it will consider legal action.

“This action flies in the face of both strong legal precedents and our fundamental notions of what religious equality means in the United States,” said ACLU of Virginia Executive Director Kent Willis.

“When the government promotes one faith, whether it is through the Ten Commandments or other religious documents,” added Willis, “it automatically diminishes all other faiths. Religious equality is an empty principle if something as powerful and influential as a school board is allowed to impose its religious views on the students who attend the schools under its jurisdiction.”

For at least the last ten years, large framed versions of the Ten Commandments hung in all five Giles County public schools, next to a copy of the Constitution. After the Freedom from Religion Foundation in Wisconsin complained last month that the documents violated the First Amendment’s mandate for separation of church and state, the copies of the Ten Commandments were removed and replaced with copies of the Declaration of Independence.

But yesterday, at a meeting attended by more than 200 county residents who objected to the removal of the Ten Commandments, the school board voted unanimously to put them on the school walls.

In doing so, the school board ignored not only clear U.S. Supreme Court precedents but also acted against the advice of its attorney and the school superintendent’s earlier decision to remove the Ten Commandments.

“After government officials hear from organizations like the ACLU,” said Willis “they typically consult with their own attorneys. When legal advisors on their own payroll support our position, that solves the problem then and there. What is unusual about this situation is that Giles County School Board members are ignoring advice from their own attorney.”

Willis added: “There are some circumstances in which the Ten Commandments may be temporarily displayed in a public school, such as when they are part of a large exhibit about the development of laws and mores throughout history. But that is not the case here.”

Giles County borders on Monroe, Summers, and Mercer Counties in West Virginia. It is deep within the Appalachian “Bible Belt.”

According to Pat Robertson’s CBN, the school board in Giles County decided to take the 10 Commandments down, but on Friday, it decided to put them back up. Pat Robertson, no surprise, is very much in favor of displaying them.

The debate on this will go this way:  The ACLU and other religious freedom organizations will sue. The locals will circle the wagons, claiming that outside agitators (ACLU- “American Communist Lawyers Union”) has come to attack God and Christianity. It will be claimed to be an example of Obama’s “Marxism.”  Never mind that people of faith should always be concerned with the state tries to promote  religion. The Colony of Virginia and the Commonwealth of Virginia that existed under the Articles of Confederation promoted the Church of England as its state church, calling the body the Episcopal Church after the Revolution. Posting the protestant 10 Commandments is promoting the protestant version of Christianity. I don’t know why people don’t see this as a problem

The actual issues involved in the case will be swept under as what I call “Appalachian Identity Politics” takes over the discourse. The outsiders don’t respect your culture, so you must reject everything they say. The outsiders could do whole lot better if they tired to understand how important faith is to many people in Appalachia, but trying to explain these issues is very difficult– particularly when many protestant ministers and pastors promote the fiction that the Founding Fathers used the bible as the foundation for the constitution.