Friday, June 01, 2012

Virginia School Division Votes to Remove Ten Commandment Display

Facing a likely loss in federal court, the Giles County School Board voted unanimously yesterday to remove a display of the Ten Commandments that had been part of a display on American government and morality.  For readers not in the know, Giles County is in the far west of Virginia - a region of Virginia still in many ways akin to something out of the old movie "Deliverance" even though that movie was supposedly set in Georgia.  Its a part of the state that not surprisingly has difficulty attracting new and progressive business - a problem not helped by the local religious extremism and rejection of modernity.  I'm sure The Family Foundation's dominatrix like president will be raising Hell with the Virginia GOP about this example of the "persecution of Christians."  Here are highlights from the Virginian Pilot:  

A copy of the Ten Commandments will soon be taken down from a hallway wall at Narrows High School, where it has hung during a year and a half of controversy and litigation.

The Giles County School Board voted unanimously Thursday to replace the commandments with a copy of a page from a history textbook that mentions the Ten Commandments in conjunction with American government and morality.

Giles County residents who have shown up en masse at earlier meetings in support of the commandments display were not in attendance for the vote, and it was unclear how it would play among that segment of the community.

The school board's 5-0 vote, taken with little discussion during a sparsely attended special meeting, comes less than a month after a federal judge raised pointed questions about whether the commandments display violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

A motion approved by the board read: "In light of the recent controversy, and legal proceedings, and the substitution of this Roots of Democracy document in the place of the text of the Ten Commandments, this board will not approve the posting of the text of the Ten Commandments in our schools unless and until the courts provide further clarification of the law in this area."

It was not clear how the vote might affect mediation sessions ordered last month by U.S. District Court Judge Michael Urbanski. Urbanski is presiding over a lawsuit in which a student at Narrows High School asked that the commandments be taken down, saying they amount to a governmental endorsement of religion.

The commandments were first placed in Giles County schools in April 1999 in response to the Columbine school shootings.  In December 2010, they were taken down after a complaint from the Freedom From Religion Foundation.  Facing heat from the community, the school board voted to put the display back up, then took it down again on legal advice.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that similar displays in Kentucky courthouses were unconstitutional, and that posting the Ten Commandments alone in a school violates the First Amendment's mandate that government not endorse religion.
Time and time again the far right in Virginia believes that it can ignore U.S. Supreme Court rulings.  Just maybe they are beginning to get the message that they are not above the law and the Constitution.

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