They aren't twisted around for me.
1. The judge himself has a bearing on the purpose/intent. The good judge was pretty open about why he put them up- which helped the court find the placement unconstitutional.
2. Even without the rather obnoxious judge, what secular purpose is really advanced by having the 10 commandments in a courtroom? Obviously religious people who find religions intimately connected with the secular will have an impossible time untangling the two- but really, a court of law does not refer to the 10 commandments, and having them in a court of law is unnecessary, and even counterproductive- since the 10 commandments are not the law. While there many be historic reasons to do an end run around Lemon when the 10 C have been up in a courtroom because our forefathers made a booboo and put them there, I see no point in making the mistake anew- and the courts seem to agree with me (thank goodness) that the 10C are not appropriate in a courtroom and it is, in fact, unconstitutional to have them there, absent some sort of general and broad display of many lawgiving traditions. Which is, imo, as it should be. We are supposed to be the many made one- we don't need crap in a courtroom that stresses we aren't really one, and that is a message to people who enter, not of that faith, that they can't expect equal treatment. You can SAY it doesn't mean that- but the message is pretty clear. Remember when all the Barbies were white? Same kind of message- and you can SAY it isn't an injury to the little black girls to have no Barbies that look like them, but that doesn't make it true. (and do you know how long it WAS before there was a black Barbie? 18 years from the beginning of the line) |
