Separation of Church and State

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS should not be displayed on publicly funded property. They are unique to the Judeo-Christian belief system, and their explicit promotion by our government is directly contrary to the core principles of that government.

Some argue our Founders were Judeo-Christian people, and since our nation was founded on their beliefs the display of the Ten Commandments in publicly funded settings is appropriate. In fact, one of their principle tenets was that government should not follow their, or any other, particular faith.

In fact, the issue of religious freedom was incidental to the founding of our country, although perhaps not to the settlement of it. The Declaration of Independence was crafted after many perceived wrongs, but the wrongs were primarily economic and political. The colonists were disenfranchised by England. Without the same political voice guaranteed to other British subjects they were nothing but a source of income, unable to fund their own advancement or have petitions to their government heard.

Our Founders realized that despite differing religious backgrounds (even though largely sheltering under the same “Judeo-Christian” umbrella) they had something in common. They wanted to be free to live, work, and worship as individuals, bound by a social contract for the good of all.

The First Amendment forbids Congress to pass laws that standardize on or promote any specific religion. ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.")

To display the Ten Commandments with public money, in government buildings, is to subvert the Founders’ wishes by another means: it is an official, paid-for recognition of Christian ideology.

It thus disenfranchises all but Christian faiths and confers on the disenfranchised a second-class status. It confers upon the Christian faiths a more influential, more powerful status.

Frankly I don't care to get into the Constitutional arguments because I think it's just plain wrong to do. I am just one lonely example of how millions must feel when someone appeals to me through an appeal to my belief...in their God.

Exactly what the Bill of Rights, with the First Amendment as its first entry, was meant to prevent.