You are trying to make this sound like a reasonable action, sort of an historical display, when unfortunately for your argument, Judge Moore is anything but reasonable and his act is far more than a "symbol".
Judge Moore has been quite outspoken in his belief that his religion reigns supreme. Nothing symbolic about it, this is an outright in your face act of defiance that brings his religion into the courtroom. He has been doing this for a long time.
Indeed, for years Moore displayed the Decalogue plaque above his dais in the county courtroom he presided over. He also ordered judicial proceedings to begin with a religious invocation, usually conducted by a local Baptist minister.
We aren't talking about a generic set of principles shared by most religions, but the very specific laws of one. Moore has even said taht he would not permit Buddhists, Hindus or Muslims to erect monuments to their faiths, because they have nothing to do with what he sees as the moral foundation of law. That foundation, in Moore's mind, comes from the one true god - his god. The god of any other religion doesn't meet Moore's measure.
When he testified in court, he said,
that the washing machine-size monument, which he had installed secretly at midnight, represents a bulwark against what he sees as 40 to 50 years of assault on religious freedom by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The court's decisions have distanced the nation from/sacknowledgment of God, and "without the acknowledgment of God there is a loss of morality," Moore said at the federal court trial in Montgomery.
That is strong evidence of the plaintiffs' contention that the monument has a religious purpose that violates the constitutional separation of church and state.
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