ANNA: Is Louisiana's Ten Commandments law instruction or indoctrination?
Jun. 28—Louisiana now requires the Ten Commandments to be placed in all classrooms. I have reservations.
Before I jump to conclusions, I like to look at the source of the controversy without opinions, so I looked up the actual legislation. First thing to catch my eye was that it has the exact wording of how the commandments should be displayed, with Thou's and Shalt's and a bunch of other archaic terms most kids won't understand.
The closest Bible Version I can find was the King James Version, Exodus 20: 2-17, but even then, some phrasing was different and details were removed. Then I read on about how the wording was chosen due to a Texas case that made it to the Supreme Court.
In 2005, the case of Orden v. Perry was over a monument that was placed at the Texas Capitol by the Fraternal Order of Eagles in 1961 listing the Ten Commandments. Ultimately, the court determined that the monument was fine and we could have that wording of the Ten Commandments on government property. Because of this, the Louisiana government used the exact wording from the statue to put in classrooms.
Except, another part of the case caught my attention in the official opinion on the case as written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist: "We held unconstitutional a Kentucky statute requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in every public schoolroom. Stone v. Graham (1980) ... The placement of the Ten Commandments monument on the Texas State Capitol grounds is a far more passive use of those texts than was the case in Stone, where the text confronted elementary school students every day."
So they chose the wording from a monument that was deemed okay, but also ignored that in the official opinion a monument on capitol grounds is different and more passive than in a classroom where students see it every day. The opinion also emphasized the importance of motive and why people wanted the Ten Commandments posted.
That brings up a much harder-to-prove debate, which is if the Louisiana government is doing this for the sake of pushing a specific religion, or if it is truly for the purpose of teaching how the Ten Commandments have influenced our law.
The new law does state many cases building the connection of the Ten Commandments and our modern law. However, if these posters are meant to be purely educational tools, then why have them posted everywhere instead of just implementing the impact of the Ten Commandments in state education standards?
The law also requires paragraphs by the poster saying why the Ten Commandments are posted. To me, this shows Louisiana lawmakers know that they're trying to justify something that is less educational and more about trying to enforce religious ideology in schools. Posters don't come with a context statement justifying it, and students don't get up close to read details about what is being displayed. It's a classroom; not a museum.
There's nothing wrong with acknowledging history, but there is a problem when you try to force people to conform to what you believe. This Louisiana law goes too much into pressure to conform than seems necessary.
Anna Beall is a staff writer for the Gainesville Register. She can be reached at abeall@gainesvilleregister.com.
