Kentucky Gets It Right

While perusing World Net Daily (aka birther-central) this morning, I saw this.  The headline reads:

ATHEISTS WIN TEN COMMANDMENTS BATTLE

WND writer Drew Zahn writes:

A Kentucky school district is yanking down multiple displays of the Ten Commandments after an atheist organization sent the county a letter warning the plaques were unconstitutional.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, or FFRF, a Wisconsin-based organization of “freethinkers” – explained on the group’s website as atheists, agnostics and skeptics devoted to spreading nontheism – told Kentucky’s Breathitt County School District it had received complaints about the displays.

Earlier this week, the district agreed to take down the displays, which had reportedly hung on area high school, middle school and several elementary schools’ walls for years.

Here's the letter the FFRF sent to the Breathitt County School District.

WND embeds this coverage of the story from WYMT-TV and in that story there's a telling quotation from a local resident who disagrees with the School Board's decision to take down the Commandments.  Mary Lou Campbell says:

Makes me angry. Because my grandchildren, I want them to have the Christian upbringing.

And so she wants the Ten Commandments to remain hanging in the public schools.

To its credit, the Kentucky Board of Education released this statement:

The display of religious materials, such as a painting of a religious figure or a copy of the Ten Commandments, in a public school violates the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on the establishment or endorsement of religion by a public agency. A school or district that displays copies of the Ten Commandments without the inclusion of other historical documents and not as part of a historical/comparative display is in violation of the U.S. Constitution. See the U.S. Supreme Court's holding on this issue in Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39, 101 S.Ct. 192 (1980). The Kentucky Department of Education's focus in Breathitt County is on student achievement and college and career readiness and using its resources to support those efforts.

The 2012 Kentucky School Laws says that:

No preference shall ever be given by law to any religious sect, society or denomination; nor to any particular creed, mode of worship or system of ecclesiastical polity; nor shall any person be compelled to attend any place of worship, to contribute to the erection or maintenance of any such place, or to the salary or support of any minister of religion; nor shall any man be compelled to send his child to any school to which he may be conscientiously opposed; and the civil rights, privileges or capacities of no person shall be taken away, or in anywise diminished or enlarged, on account of his belief or disbelief of any religious tenet, dogma or teaching. No human authority shall, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience.

And in discussing the unconstitutionality of displaying the Ten Commandments on school property, it reads:

Since the pre-eminent purpose for posting the Ten Commandments on schoolroom walls is plainly religious in nature, this section has no secular legislative purpose and is therefore unconstitutional as violative of the establishment clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution; it does not matter that the posted copies are financed by voluntary private contributions, for the mere posting of the copies under the auspices of the Legislature provides the official support of the state government that the establishment clause prohibits.

Each is correct.  And as a result the unconstitutional displays have been removed - all within a couple of weeks  It's been about 8 months since the FFRF sent letters to two local school districts about theirequally unconstitutional Ten Commandment monuments.  As of right now, those two monuments have yet to be removed.

If Kentucky can get it so right so quickly, why can't New Kensington or Connellsville?

Religious Freedom Update

According to this poll, done by the Barna Group, there's something very interesting going on in one segment of American society.

Huffington Post has the summary:

Half of Americans worry that religious freedom in the U.S. is at risk, and many say activist groups -- particularly gays and lesbians -- are trying to remove "traditional Christian values" from the public square.

No that's not it.

The findings of a poll published Wednesday (Jan. 23), reveal a "double standard" among a significant portion of evangelicals on the question of religious liberty, said David Kinnaman, president of Barna Group, a California think tank that studies American religion and culture.

Getting closer, but that's not it, either.

While these Christians are particularly concerned that religious freedoms are being eroded in this country, "they also want Judeo-Christians to dominate the culture," said Kinnamon.

THERE IT IS.

I touched on this a few times last year (here and here) but it's good to see some numbers supporting the same idea.  So what are the numbers?  From Barna:

Though most Americans agree religious freedoms should be granted to people of all faiths, there are still a significant number of people (23%) who believe traditional Judeo-Christian values should be given preference in the public square. The majority, though, would disagree: two-thirds of Americans (66%) say there’s no one set of values that should dominate the country and another 11% of adults declined or gave another response. Practicing Catholics (24%) are about on par with the national average, while practicing Protestants (35%) and evangelicals (54%) are above average in selecting traditional Judeo-Christian values.

But take a closer look at that first sentence.  First, let me quote some well known conservative rhetoric and point out that freedoms aren't granted they're to be protected or limited.  But that aside, shouldn't the religious freedoms of everyone (not just "people of all faiths") be protected?  I realize this could be just some sloppy writing so let's assume that I am seeing something that's not there.  But what does that leave us?

Between a fifth and a quarter of the American population believes in "religious freedom" while still paradoxically believing that "traditional Judeo-Christian values" should dominate the culture.

People like these people in Connellsville:

Thou Shalt Not Move, a grassroots group, urged the Connellsville area to continue to support efforts to keep the Ten Commandments Monument at the Connellsville Junior High School.

More specifically:

“We are under attack on a national level and this issue, as small as it seems to some, is as big as the right to bear arms and Obamacare where they’re taking the right to health care away from you,” [Meeting organizer Gary] Colatch said. “They’re trying to strip away our rights. We’re facing that tyranny today. We’re facing that tyranny in Connellsville.” [Emphasis added.]

Again, it's a Ten Commandments monument at a public school.  It's unconstitutional.  Mr Colatch is looking to protect a religious right that he doesn't actually have: the "right" to use the public school system to impose his faith onto others.

Meanwhile, there's been some movement at that other unconstitutional monument (the one in New Kensington):

A federal district judge on Tuesday denied a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a Wisconsin-based group against a school district in Westmoreland County regarding its display of a Ten Commandments monument.

And:

The arguments to dismiss the cases filed on behalf of the school districts were similar, specifically referring to the 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Van Orden v. Perry.

We've looked at Van Orden before.

Here's the judge's denial of the motion to dismiss.

On hearing news of the denial, Rev. Ewing Marietta had this to say:

A federal district judge on Tuesday denied a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a Wisconsin-based group against a school district in Westmoreland County regarding its display of a Ten Commandments monument.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) sued both the New Kensington-Arnold School District and the Connellsville Area School District over displays of the Ten Commandments posted outside schools in each district. The New Kensington-Arnold suit was filed first, and there is a decision pending on a motion to dismiss the Connellsville suit.

“This may not be the best news for us,” Marietta said. [Emphasis added.]

Sorry to hear that you're disappointed, Reverend.

On the other hand, it's always a good news when everyone's religious freedom is being protected.

New Kensington Ten Commandments Monument Update

Just as there's a Facebook page supporting the (still unconstitutional) Ten Commandments monument in Connellsville, there's now a Facebook page calling for the removal of the (equally unconstitutional) Ten Commandments monument in New Kensington.

From the description:

This purpose of this group is to show support and solidarity for plaintiffs in Freedom From Religion Foundation v. New Kensington-Arnold School District, a federal lawsuit currently before the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

Plaintiffs object to a stone monument depicting the 10 Commandments prominently displayed in front of Valley High School, a public school in New Kensington, Pennsylvania.

Such displays show overt favoritism for Christianity on behalf of the government and violate the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment as applied to the states via the 14th Amendment, as found by the United States Supreme Court in Stone v. Graham.

Anyone know if there's a similar facebook page for the monument in Connellsville?