The Ten Commandments are Not for Children

 

A three judge Federal Appeals Court ruled against a Louisianna law requiring the Ten Commandments be posted in every public school. We don't expect such a ruling coming out of the Bible Belt. Anyone who reads them, however, should realize a.) they are mostly about religion and b.) they include material not appropriate for children. Decade after decade there are whackos promoting putting the Ten Commandments in schools and homes. 

I have on my shelf a book about a Ten Commandments crusade from the 1950's. A judge in Minneapolis got the notion that putting the Ten Commandments in homes improved the behavior of teenage boys. He persuaded his fraternal order to fund publishing and mailing them to parents across the U.S. Of course, the benefits were always his imagination and were never seen in real life. The version of the Ten Commandments he used then appeared on stone monuments that were displayed across the country. 

Today we are reliving the folly of the 1950's with a belief posting the Ten Commandments in schools will have some benefit. Fortunately, this nonsense is not universally endorsed in the court system. 

I remember a remark made by a Federal Judge in Farge when our local atheist group was trying to remove the stone Ten Commandments from in front of City Hall. When the judge was exchanging comments with the City's attorney, who of course was defending the monument, the judge said something like, "So in your view the monument should stay because its part of the properties history, even though if someone proposed it today for the first time the answer probably would be no." That prediction played out in the Court of Appeaos in Louisianna. 

Explaining to a child what is meant by "Don't covet thy neighbor's wives (that's plural)" seem difficult to me. I'd suggest not putting it in front of a child.