An Oklahoma Bill from 2009, HOUSE BILL 1330.
An Act relating to the state capital and Capitol Building; providing for legislative findings; creating the Ten Commandments Monument Display Act; authorizing the placement of a monument displaying and honoring the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Oklahoma State Capitol; authorizing the Secretary of State to work with certain persons in designing a monument; providing for the location for the monument; authorizing the Attorney General to defend certain challenges; providing for codification providing for noncodification; and providing an effective date.
Stupid. There shouldn’t be such a monument. It’s a horrible theocratic set of “commandments” and it doesn’t belong anywhere near any government buildings.
The ten. Protestant version.
I. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
II. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
III. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.
IV. Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy.
V. Honor thy father and thy mother.
VI. Thou shalt not kill.
VII. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
VIII. Thou shalt not steal.
IX. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
X. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors goods.
See? The first four are brazenly theocratic. The Oklahoma legislature has no business telling any citizen to do or not do any of those things.
Part of their rationale goes like this:
3. That the Ten Commandments represent a philosophy of Oklahomans and other Americans today, that God has ordained civil government and has delegated limited authority to civil government, that God has limited the authority of civil government, and that God has endowed people with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;
That’s not a philosophy, it’s a religion, that is dependent on invocation of an imagined person who does not communicate with us. It has no business being mixed up with government.
Too bad they didn’t use the version that forbids to boil a kid goat in its mother’s milk… (Exodus, 34:26) I wonder how many of the redactors even know there are different versions of their “philosophy”!
I like the cutoff location for the preview at butterfliesandwheels.org 🙂
that God has ordained civil government and has delegated limited authority to civil government
Divine right of kings is out guys. No, really.
Although god is probably giving a bunch of lawyers a mandate to rake some idiot legislators over the coals, right about now. He sure moves in mysterious ways — he must just want certain members of the Oklahoma house to look like jackasses in the political arena, huh?
I like that they mistook Cecil B. DeMille’s version of the 10 commandments for the ones from the bible. I guess they are too busy thumping it to read it.
I think they should be required to prove every one of these assertions.
I just love that Christians are creating monuments by engraving in large rocks:
and dissing people who don’t want them to put that monument on courthouse property as anti-God.
Seriously. You can’t get much more stupid.
They’ve lost again, by the way.
http://www.hrc.org/blog/entry/u.s.-district-judge-rules-oklahoma-ban-on-marriage-equality-unconstitutiona
Crip Dyke @#6 Christians are creating monuments by engraving in large rocks
We have your internet palletized, wrapped and ready to ship. Where would you like it delivered?
I’m so sick of that list.
I’m sure the people who tout the Commandments’ special place in our laws and in our hearts routinely violate III and IV. Or, at the very least, don’t care about them one whit.
I don’t see why the state should care about my relationship with II, V, and X.
I and VII are clearly my own business.
That leaves VI, VIII, and IX. I think everyone agrees these are worthy and necessary. Fortunately, we (and all other societies) have (secular) laws against them.
As Marcus Ranum notes @ # 4, the bill’s author(s) want to use the “For Dummies” version, an abridgement cutting out about 80% of the 300-word text found in King Jimmy’s Version.
Should this pass, I predict droughts, tornadoes, and the occasional flood in Oklahoma and adjoining areas.
Heretics.
Bet they’ll choose – or try to choose – the wrong set. How many of these pillars of piety know the only place in the entire canon where the phrase “ten commandments” is used is Exodus 34? And a number of those only apply if one is trying to keep kosher? (With a nod to #1.)
I. Me, Me, Me! Me first! Don’t you dare admire any of the other gods more than you admire me.
II. Me, Me, Me! Don’t ask me for anything, since I’m too lazy (or non-existent) to answer, so your asking will be in vain, and that makes me look bad.
III. Me, Me, Me! Don’t make any pictures or statues since they might be prettier than me. Cameras are especially bad since I, like your other delusions, don’t show up in photographs.
IV. Me, Me, Me! One whole day a week is mine and you must do nothing but kiss up to me on that day.
Um, maybe, as a foreigner, I have a poor grasp of the US Constitution, but didn’t the Founding Fathers “ordain” civil government and isn’t it “the people” who delegate limited authority to civil government?
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