MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore was removed from office Thursday for refusing to obey a federal court order to move his Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the state courthouse.The full text can be found here.
I was surprised at the outcome; I thought he might be censured but I did not expect he'd be removed outright. I doubted the Court of the Judiciary, which heard the case, would have the courage in the current climate. I'm glad I was wrong.
We can expect the right-wing propaganda machine to be in full-throated roar about this. They will, of course, for the most part either be either lying or clueless and in some cases probably both. So two things to keep in mind:
- They will likely rehash the old claims that the Constitution only bans creation of a particular state religion, not religion itself from government affairs and that the Ten Commandments are "the" basis of Western law.
First, they'll be misquoting the First Amendment, which says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." (Not "a" religion.) Second, while the Ten Commandments might be considered a basis of our laws, they are most certainly not the basis, especially since the Commandments themselves are based on older concepts and some of the Mosaic laws drawn from those Commandments would now be considered at best archaic if not barbaric. And even by the rightists' own definition, how does declaring a central concept of Judeo-Christianity to be the basis of our laws not establishing a religion? What, it's not "establishing a religion" unless it's a particular strain of Presbyterianism or something?
- After the verdict, Moore declared (quoted from a different version of the story than the one linked above) "It's about whether or not you can acknowledge God as a source of our law and our liberty. That's all I've done. I've been found guilty." And rightly so. An individual can indeed declare God to be a - even the - source of "our law and liberty." But the State cannot. And as a judge, in the courthouse, Moore is (or, happily, was) an agent of the State and cannot make it a platform for his personal beliefs.
Finally, one other thing on this, less related to the legalities but significant nonetheless. Moore testified "To acknowledge God cannot be a violation of the Canons of Ethics. Without God there can be no ethics." That belief, one which I've heard expressed even by people of good conscience, in effect declares that those who do not believe in God (or, perhaps, even those who do not believe in the speaker's particular concept of God) lack ethics and morality. In an individual, such an attitude is offensive. In an official of the State, it's dangerous.
Addendum: AP reports that on November 13 a federal judge in Richmond, VA ruled that the Chesterfield County board unconstitutionally discriminated against Cyndi Simpson, a Wiccan, when it prohibited her from joining a list of clergy who deliver pre-meeting invocations. County Attorney Steven L. Micas had written to Simpson in September 2002 that "Chesterfield's nonsectarian invocations are traditionally made to a divinity that is consistent with the Judeo-Christian tradition.''
So it is in fact the belief of at least some public officials that government bodies can endorse religious expression which is limited to that "consistent with the Judeo-Christian tradition" without establishing a religion. Happily, the court did not agree.
Another addendum: Findlaw.com has a good article flattening the idea that the Ten Commandments form the basis of our laws.
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