WorldNetDaily.com - Ten Commandments Monuments Challenged - Ruling Creates Way for Stone Tablets with Competing Beliefs

March 08, 2008
by WorldNetDaily.com

Unless the U.S. Supreme Court overturns a ruling from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, children playing in parks soon could be tripping over a monument that lauds the principles of "psychokinesis, correspondence, vibration, opposition, rhythm, cause and effect, and gender."

The American Center for Law and Justice says it has filed additional information with the court in a dispute over such monuments on public land, which resulted from demands by an organization called "Summum" to be allowed the post its principles wherever any other monument, such as a monument to the Ten Commandments, has been erected.

That principle was endorsed by the appeals court in a consolidated case involving individual disputes in Duchesne, Utah, and Pleasant Grove, Utah, and officials with the ACLJ warn there could be huge ramifications if it is left unchanged.

A Statue of Tyranny in New York Harbor, or memorials to Adolf Hitler, King George the 3rd and others all would be possible, they said.

"It's very scary," Frank Manion, of the ACLJ told WND earlier. "The Minutemen in Massachusetts? We need a Redcoat. A George Washington statue? Why not George the 3rd. A Holocaust memorial? How about a Hitler memorial?"

The U.S. Supreme Court still hasn't determined whether it will hear and rule on the situation, but the ACLJ, which specializes in constitutional law, filed its documents in reply to a request from Summum that the court not hear the case because it has the ruling it desired..

The 10th Circuit found that Summum, or any other group, could erect any monuments they choose if there already is another monument on the grounds of the park or whatever area is in question. Many city halls, parks and other locations already have Ten Commandments monuments that have been donated over the generations.

The ACLJ said the Ten Commandments monuments are the real targets of the legal actions, because under the 10th Circuit decision, cities and other governments would be faced with the decision of allowing anything to be posted, or removing the Ten Commandments monuments. Lawyers have said a probable outcome in many cases would be orders to remove existing monuments.

"The Supreme Court is faced with a dramatic opportunity: preserve sound precedent involving the well-established distinction between government speech and private speech or permit a twisted interpretation of the Constitution to create havoc in cities and localities across America," said Jay Sekulow, the chief counsel for the ACLJ.

"We're hopeful the high court will take the cases and correct a troubling decision that would ultimately force local governments to remove long-standing and well-established patriotic, religious and historical displays. The lower court decisions miss a key distinction between government speech and private speech. The government has to be neutral toward private speech, but it does not have to be neutral in its own speech. The 10th Circuit confused this rule when it said private parties have a First Amendment right to put up the monuments of their choosing in a city park, unless the city takes away all other donated monuments."

The ACLJ, which has worked on the case with the Thomas More Law Center, contends that the Constitution "does not empower private parties to force permanent displays into a park, crowding out the available physical space and trumping the government's own vision" for the parks.

"In the Duchesne case, even an attorney for Summum admitted to the federal district court that its position could lead to bizarre results. Summum's attorneys told the court that if a city park is required to display monuments contributed by all comers, the city park 'may well end up looking like a cemetery with many, many monuments,'" the ACLJ said.

Under Summum's theology, adherents believe the first set of stone tablets Moses received on Mt. Sinai contained its seven aphorisms "made by a divine being."

"The first set of stone tablets was not inscribed with the Ten Commandments. Rather, they contained aphorisms of a Higher Law that held very profound and deep meanings," the organization's website says.

The group believes Moses "had been initiated into an understanding of the inner, esoteric source" of those aphorisms, but when he "observed the immature behavior and attitude of the Israelites" he realized they could not understand them too.

"So Moses destroyed the stone tables and revealed the aphorisms to a select few."

The law firm warned earlier: "In 1886, the United States government accepted from the people of France a donation of a 151-foot tall colossal statue called "Liberty Enlightening the World. Since that time, the government has displayed this Statue of Liberty in a traditional public forum in New York Harbor.

"For years, demonstrators with messages to deliver have assembled, handed out literature and otherwise expressed themselves at the site subject to certain regulations of the time, place and manner of their expression. But it probably never occurred to any such demonstrators that they enjoyed a constitutional right to insist that the government allow them to erect their own 151-foot tall statue or monument setting forth an alternative message to that conveyed by Lady Liberty," the law firm warned.

"Under the flawed private speech jurisprudence of the panel in this case there exists no principled basis upon which the government could turn down for permanent display on Liberty Island a donation of a 'Statue of Tyranny,' or, perhaps, a new copper colossus bearing the message 'Pay No Attention to the Lady With the Torch the Golden Door is Now Closed,'" the legal briefs argue.