On Sunday, the members of my Baptist church in New Orleans recited our church covenant, a public declaration of the ways we’ll demonstrate our faith that includes a commitment to “religiously training our children.” Though we recite this covenant once a month, this particular Sunday’s recitation was different. We uttered those words while entering the era in which the state of Louisiana has taken that role of religious “training” upon itself. The Louisiana Legislature has decreed that, beginning this year, every classroom in every public school must prominently display the Ten Commandments. Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, who triumphantly signed the bill in June, said last month that the 20-year-old man who fired a rifle at former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania might not have done so if his classrooms had displayed the Ten Commandments.
Gov. Jeff Landry said last month that the 20-year-old man who fired a rifle at former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania might not have done so if his classrooms had displayed the Ten Commandments.
There’s no honest way to read the Bible — or any literature on human behavior — and reach such a conclusion. If anything, the Bible’s message is the opposite: that a commandment not to do something will be followed by people doing that forbidden thing. That’s not to say that the Ten Commandments are a provocation to do wrong, only that plenty of wrong has been done by those who’ve seen the Ten Commandments. One must ignore thousands of years of data to treat the Ten Commandments as a prophylactic against wrongdoing. But such illogic is typical of Landry, a former state attorney general.
Yet the bigger issue for me — as someone who grew up in a denomination that is largely responsible for the existence of the First Amendment and as the father of a public-school student in Louisiana — is that the law wrongly gives the state a role in religious instruction. This gross overreach should offend not just Baptists, but anyone who professes to be guided by the Constitution and anyone who wants the government to leave them alone.
And after the preposterous arguments made by Landry and Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill at a Monday news conference, even those who think the government should honor and promote their religious beliefs have reason to be upset. In providing a federal court examples of Ten Commandments posters that they say pass constitutional muster, Landry and Murrill trivialized the significance of the Ten Commandments by putting them on the same level as pop culture.
A teacher would be adhering to the law and avoiding any kind of constitutional violation, Louisiana says in its court brief, by putting a photo of Charlton Heston playing Moses and holding the Ten Commandments on one side of a poster and a photo of Lin-Manuel Miranda playing Alexander Hamilton and the “Ten Duel Commandments” on the other side. Similarly, a teacher could put up a cartoon depiction of an electronic tablet (such as an iPad or Kindle Fire or Samsung Galaxy) referring to the Ten Commandments as “the original tablet.” They even made a Ten Commandments poster with a meme taken from the movie “Mean Girls” in which a character asks, “Why are you so obsessed with me?” According to the brief, a teacher could put headlines from stories about the ACLU fighting laws requiring the display of the Ten Commandments on such a poster and satisfy Louisiana law without offending the Constitution.
They even made a Ten Commandments poster with a meme taken from the movie ‘Mean Girls’ in which a character asks, ‘Why are you so obsessed with me?’
Is it really Louisiana’s argument that posters such as these not only honor the Ten Commandments, but would also provide the moral instruction that would have deterred Trump’s would-be assassin? If so, would a poster that lists the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Ten Crack Commandments” have done the trick, too?
No posters have appeared in my daughter’s classrooms, and it’s unclear if any have appeared in classrooms across the state. Because the law gives schools until January to comply, school officials likely are waiting until the new year, especially as courts weigh a challenge to the law’s constitutionality.
In that Monday news conference, Landry additionally attempted to defend the law by pointing out that it passed overwhelmingly and was supported by some Democrats. But the two parties in Louisiana have often coalesced around bad ideas, and this is no exception. Regardless, the share of lawmakers supporting a law has no bearing on its constitutionality. If every Louisiana lawmaker voted for it, that wouldn’t prevent a court from declaring it problematic.
But Landry argues that legislative might makes right and that parents who don’t want the state forcing their children to see the Ten Commandments ought to just tell their children “not to look at them.”
He said Monday, “I think we’ve forgotten in this country that democracy actually means majority rule.” There, Landry betrays his intentions. I doubt he believes that putting up posters of the Ten Commandments will deter mass shooters. I do believe he thinks that putting them up shows folks who’s in charge in Louisiana. That kind of belief in “majority rule” made 18th-century Baptists insist upon the prohibition against the establishment of religion that appears in the First Amendment. They knew that unchecked “majority rule” is incompatible with freedom — no matter how many lawmakers vote otherwise.
