August 21, 2025
Sour Lemonheads: The Hypocrisy of Banning the Ten Commandments
Timothy Birdnow
A federal judge has blocked a Texas law allowing the state to requirre the posting of the Ten Commandments in schools.
This judge is relying on court rulings going back to the early '70's in a fit of retro pique. But much of the underpinnings of those rulings has been knocked out by subsequent Court rulings and so there is a real reason to be hopeful this judge will be overturned on appeal.
SCOTUSBLOG shows why the issue was not settled after the 1971 "Lemon Test" was imposed by predecessors which created strict guidelines for Separation of Church and State policies.
SCOTUSBLOG has this to say on the subject:
So the Supreme Court gutted the original ruling's foundation. And without being able to state plainly that there is a specific legal reason to abrogate the righrts of states in this matter then the point should be moot; this becomes entirely a state matter.
The article continues:
That last is important; ancient Israel was indeed theocratic in nature and the Founding Fathers modeled our nation on ancient Israel in no small part. The Establishment Clause states "Congress shall make no law concerning the Establishment of religion, nor prohibit the free expression thereof". Of course this isn't CONGRESS making these laws but the states, so already the courts are on shaky ground (yes, they have previously ruled that the Constitution applies to states as well as the Federal government).
How, pray tell, is this establishing religion? This clause was put in the Constitution to avoid having state religions in which you had to be a member of get out of the state. It was not a device to purge religion from society, most especially from our schools which are not mentioned in the Constitution one way or another.
I ask you, what other "establishment" violations do we regularly ignore? I write this on a Thursday and no doubt the courts all file documents with the word Thursday on them. But isn't this an establishment violation? Thursday is named for Thor, the Scandinavian god. Wednesday is named for Woden. Saturday for Saturn, Sunday for the sun, which many pagans worship. Monday for the Moon.
And what of January" Named for the Roman god Janus. March is named for Mars. June for Juno. You see where I'm going with this, right?
So the courts may want to first look to their own establishment clause sins. They violate it all the time BY THEIR RECONING.
But, but, but...the Lemon test says there has to be a secular purpose!
Well, the Lemon test was junked by SCOTUS but even if it were not who says the Ten Commandments - which were used heavily by the Founding Fathers to create our laws and to founed our nation, has no secular purpose?
Alcoholics anonymous is a very successful alcohol treatment program and one of it's core principles is to acknowlege a higher power. In fact, they recite the serenity Prayer which acknowledges God and asks for His aid in their effort. Courts regularly remand drunk drivers and people with alcohol issues to AA on a regular basis, because although they have a secular purpose at their core is a religious belief and some could argue it is the establishment of a religion using this reasoning employed against the Ten Commandments.
So we violate the principle being employed by this judge and others all the time. And we should; freedom of religion was never about freedom from being exposed to religion. You have always had the right to just ignore it - just as we do with free speech issues. Everyone has a right to speech, and we have a duty to allow them to speak even if we find them offensive. But we don't have to listen to them.
Essentially banning Judeo-Christian views from our society is qualitatively no different than speech codes which control what we say. We are largely in agreement in our society that such codes are evil (although the Left tried hard to impose them) but similar codes by the enemies of religion and decency are a necessity based on the Constitution. It's an amazing twisting of the original intent.
If courts can ban the Ten Commandments from schools, why cannot they ban the prayer before Congress?
If courts can ban the Ten Commandments from schools, why can't they ban laws against, say, marrying a sixtee year old? That comes from our Judeo-Christian heritage; in the Islamic world child brides are as common as the cold. Muhammad himself married a four year old (and was gentleman enough to wait until she was nine to consummate the marriage). Legal age of consent is not secular in nature; it comes from religion.
I could go on with more examples but you can probably think up your own. MOST of our legalprecepts are gleaned from religion, especially from Christianity and Judaism.
The Ten Commandments are an historical document and cannot be simply removed based on the establishment clause. IF they were to say "come join your local Mehodist church today" or some such then the case could be made. But these are like political advertising; there are many ads that are run during election cycles that don't mention a specific candidate whom they are supporting and that allows non-profits to run political ads. If that principle is fine for election law why is it not fine for a deeply embedded cultural document like the Ten Commandments?
This issue is chock-full of hypocrisy. And our Founding Fathers wuld be horrified at how the enemies of God have twisted what they were trying to do, fashioning a weapon to use against the Most High and against society.
A federal judge has blocked a Texas law allowing the state to requirre the posting of the Ten Commandments in schools.
This judge is relying on court rulings going back to the early '70's in a fit of retro pique. But much of the underpinnings of those rulings has been knocked out by subsequent Court rulings and so there is a real reason to be hopeful this judge will be overturned on appeal.
SCOTUSBLOG shows why the issue was not settled after the 1971 "Lemon Test" was imposed by predecessors which created strict guidelines for Separation of Church and State policies.
SCOTUSBLOG has this to say on the subject:
The 5-4 opinion in Stone v. Graham centered on what’s known as the Lemon test, which came from a 1971 ruling, Lemon v. Kurtzman, which considered how to determine whether a state statute violates the establishment clause.
In that case, the court outlined a three-part test. First, a statute had to be found to have a secular purpose. Second, the statute could not promote or restrict religious beliefs or practices. And third, the statute could not foster excessive church-state entanglement (an admittedly nebulous standard).
In Stone, the majority determined Kentucky’s law violated the first prong, since the "preeminent purpose of posting the Ten Commandments” was "plainly religious in nature,” even if Kentucky lawmakers claimed they were celebrating the Ten Commandments’ historical, rather than religious, value.
As the court wrote: "The Ten Commandments are undeniably a sacred text in the Jewish and Christian faiths, and no legislative recitation of a supposed secular purpose can blind us to that fact. The Commandments do not confine themselves to arguably secular material, such as honoring one’s parents, killing or murder, adultery, stealing, false witness, and covetousness. Rather, the first part of the Commandments concerns the religious duties of believers: worshipping the Lord God alone, avoiding idolatry, not using the Lord’s name in vain, and observing the Sabbath Day.”
In the 45 years since that decision was released, the content of the Ten Commandments (obviously) hasn’t changed, but the Supreme Court’s approach to the establishment clause has.
In the 2022 case of Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the court ruled that a school district in Washington state had violated the First Amendment rights of a football coach when it suspended him for praying on the field after games, often with students. In reaching that conclusion, the majority rejected the school district’s contention that it had to suspend him to avoid violating the establishment clause. In a 6-3 opinion, the court officially cast aside the Lemon test (once described by Justice Antonin Scalia as resembling "some ghoul in a late night horror movie”) and instructed judges to consider history and "the understanding of the Founding Fathers” when weighing establishment clause questions, instead of balancing the interests in play as prescribed by the Lemon test.
Since Stone relied on the Lemon test, and the Lemon test has now been essentially abrogated, it is uncertain what the Supreme Court will do if and when it weighs in on these latest challenges to displaying the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.
In that case, the court outlined a three-part test. First, a statute had to be found to have a secular purpose. Second, the statute could not promote or restrict religious beliefs or practices. And third, the statute could not foster excessive church-state entanglement (an admittedly nebulous standard).
In Stone, the majority determined Kentucky’s law violated the first prong, since the "preeminent purpose of posting the Ten Commandments” was "plainly religious in nature,” even if Kentucky lawmakers claimed they were celebrating the Ten Commandments’ historical, rather than religious, value.
As the court wrote: "The Ten Commandments are undeniably a sacred text in the Jewish and Christian faiths, and no legislative recitation of a supposed secular purpose can blind us to that fact. The Commandments do not confine themselves to arguably secular material, such as honoring one’s parents, killing or murder, adultery, stealing, false witness, and covetousness. Rather, the first part of the Commandments concerns the religious duties of believers: worshipping the Lord God alone, avoiding idolatry, not using the Lord’s name in vain, and observing the Sabbath Day.”
In the 45 years since that decision was released, the content of the Ten Commandments (obviously) hasn’t changed, but the Supreme Court’s approach to the establishment clause has.
In the 2022 case of Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the court ruled that a school district in Washington state had violated the First Amendment rights of a football coach when it suspended him for praying on the field after games, often with students. In reaching that conclusion, the majority rejected the school district’s contention that it had to suspend him to avoid violating the establishment clause. In a 6-3 opinion, the court officially cast aside the Lemon test (once described by Justice Antonin Scalia as resembling "some ghoul in a late night horror movie”) and instructed judges to consider history and "the understanding of the Founding Fathers” when weighing establishment clause questions, instead of balancing the interests in play as prescribed by the Lemon test.
Since Stone relied on the Lemon test, and the Lemon test has now been essentially abrogated, it is uncertain what the Supreme Court will do if and when it weighs in on these latest challenges to displaying the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.
So the Supreme Court gutted the original ruling's foundation. And without being able to state plainly that there is a specific legal reason to abrogate the righrts of states in this matter then the point should be moot; this becomes entirely a state matter.
The article continues:
Thus, today’s court is more likely to draw on the other 2005 case, Van Orden v. Perry, in which a majority of the justices, after openly setting aside the Lemon test, allowed a Ten Commandments display at the Texas State Capitol to remain standing precisely because they felt it appropriately acknowledged the Ten Commandments’ historical significance to the United States.
The court, in an opinion by then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist, acknowledged that "the Ten Commandments are religious—they were so viewed at their inception and so remain. The monument, therefore, has religious significance. … But Moses was a lawgiver as well as a religious leader. And the Ten Commandments have an undeniable historical meaning, as the foregoing examples demonstrate. Simply having religious content or promoting a message consistent with a religious doctrine does not run afoul of the Establishment Clause.
The court, in an opinion by then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist, acknowledged that "the Ten Commandments are religious—they were so viewed at their inception and so remain. The monument, therefore, has religious significance. … But Moses was a lawgiver as well as a religious leader. And the Ten Commandments have an undeniable historical meaning, as the foregoing examples demonstrate. Simply having religious content or promoting a message consistent with a religious doctrine does not run afoul of the Establishment Clause.
That last is important; ancient Israel was indeed theocratic in nature and the Founding Fathers modeled our nation on ancient Israel in no small part. The Establishment Clause states "Congress shall make no law concerning the Establishment of religion, nor prohibit the free expression thereof". Of course this isn't CONGRESS making these laws but the states, so already the courts are on shaky ground (yes, they have previously ruled that the Constitution applies to states as well as the Federal government).
How, pray tell, is this establishing religion? This clause was put in the Constitution to avoid having state religions in which you had to be a member of get out of the state. It was not a device to purge religion from society, most especially from our schools which are not mentioned in the Constitution one way or another.
I ask you, what other "establishment" violations do we regularly ignore? I write this on a Thursday and no doubt the courts all file documents with the word Thursday on them. But isn't this an establishment violation? Thursday is named for Thor, the Scandinavian god. Wednesday is named for Woden. Saturday for Saturn, Sunday for the sun, which many pagans worship. Monday for the Moon.
And what of January" Named for the Roman god Janus. March is named for Mars. June for Juno. You see where I'm going with this, right?
So the courts may want to first look to their own establishment clause sins. They violate it all the time BY THEIR RECONING.
But, but, but...the Lemon test says there has to be a secular purpose!
Well, the Lemon test was junked by SCOTUS but even if it were not who says the Ten Commandments - which were used heavily by the Founding Fathers to create our laws and to founed our nation, has no secular purpose?
Alcoholics anonymous is a very successful alcohol treatment program and one of it's core principles is to acknowlege a higher power. In fact, they recite the serenity Prayer which acknowledges God and asks for His aid in their effort. Courts regularly remand drunk drivers and people with alcohol issues to AA on a regular basis, because although they have a secular purpose at their core is a religious belief and some could argue it is the establishment of a religion using this reasoning employed against the Ten Commandments.
So we violate the principle being employed by this judge and others all the time. And we should; freedom of religion was never about freedom from being exposed to religion. You have always had the right to just ignore it - just as we do with free speech issues. Everyone has a right to speech, and we have a duty to allow them to speak even if we find them offensive. But we don't have to listen to them.
Essentially banning Judeo-Christian views from our society is qualitatively no different than speech codes which control what we say. We are largely in agreement in our society that such codes are evil (although the Left tried hard to impose them) but similar codes by the enemies of religion and decency are a necessity based on the Constitution. It's an amazing twisting of the original intent.
If courts can ban the Ten Commandments from schools, why cannot they ban the prayer before Congress?
If courts can ban the Ten Commandments from schools, why can't they ban laws against, say, marrying a sixtee year old? That comes from our Judeo-Christian heritage; in the Islamic world child brides are as common as the cold. Muhammad himself married a four year old (and was gentleman enough to wait until she was nine to consummate the marriage). Legal age of consent is not secular in nature; it comes from religion.
I could go on with more examples but you can probably think up your own. MOST of our legalprecepts are gleaned from religion, especially from Christianity and Judaism.
The Ten Commandments are an historical document and cannot be simply removed based on the establishment clause. IF they were to say "come join your local Mehodist church today" or some such then the case could be made. But these are like political advertising; there are many ads that are run during election cycles that don't mention a specific candidate whom they are supporting and that allows non-profits to run political ads. If that principle is fine for election law why is it not fine for a deeply embedded cultural document like the Ten Commandments?
This issue is chock-full of hypocrisy. And our Founding Fathers wuld be horrified at how the enemies of God have twisted what they were trying to do, fashioning a weapon to use against the Most High and against society.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
08:13 AM
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