Bend the knee
This is both idiotic and evil.
Louisiana will require the 10 Commandments [be] displayed in every public school classroom
The 10 orders are extremely thin morality and they are mostly religious. There is no good reason at all to stick them up in classrooms, let alone to mandate sticking them up in classrooms.
The Sacred Grocery List:
- I’m the only god
- Don’t make “idols”
- Don’t use my name when you swear
- Make one day every week all about me
- Honor your father and mother [in that order, of course]
- Don’t murder
- Don’t fuck around
- Don’t steal
- Don’t lie
- Don’t long for other people’s stuff
Why put that on the classroom walls? It’s so thin, so impoverished, so minimal – so worthless. The first 4 are god’s vanity project and can be thrown right out, and the last six are either minimal – don’t kill or steal or lie; well no shit, Dad – or nobody else’s business.
There’s nothing about being generous or compassionate or energetic in opposing cruelty and injustice. There are just bossy demands from Mr Deity and a few rules too obvious to mention, let alone plaster on school walls.
I’m guessing this is yet another Christian Dominion project? Push out this ridiculous and baldly unconstitutional law. If no-one with standing challenges it – win. If someone does challenge it try and get it in front of SCOTUS in the hope and belief that the conservative majority will affirm it as constitutional and that the US is Christian and that is the State religion – win! Then you can be really horrible to muslims, jews, hindu’s, and especially those godless atheists. frankly I doubt they would get more than two votes in SCOTUS, maybe four at a pinch.
As I’m sure we all know here, “the” ten commandments are numbered and texted differently in different religious traditions, and in the two books where the lists are provided. I see from the article that the ACLU, AU, and FFRF have made that point in a joint statement:
The text in the bill includes the list (KJV, unnumbered) and a bunch of historical “context” of how the list was used in old school textbooks, which apparently somehow makes this OK. The Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, and the Northwest Ordinance are also to be displayed, to give some sort of cover for the main attraction.
The good news is, this could be the least of our problems come November.
Obligatory George Carlin take on the 10 Commandments (Catholic version because raised Catholic, natch), only really need 2 (or 3).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk81tUUhRig
Ach I was enjoying it until he got to the adultery bit and forgot that women are people too.
Why would a state infested with papists use the KJV version (sounds like ATM machine but still…)?
You know the commandments better than at least one lawmaker who wants to display them in public places because they’re so incredibly important:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2w7wxt
There’s always Bill and Ted’s “Be excellent to each other”. No less ambiguous or prone to biased exegesis than anything else, but also simpler and morally better.
Curiouser and curiouser. This lends a new dimension to the ‘Sacred Grocery List’ above. See Item 1: “I’m the only god.” If that is the case, God ‘himself’ has to be an asexual ‘it’. Otherwise, it begs the question: “What became of the goddesses in his life? Where do his mother, wife and sisters now reside?” The theologian Thomas Romer holds, according to the reference below, that the Original Ark of the Covenant contained “two cult image statues symbolizing Yhwh (Jehovah) and his female companion Ashera or a statue representing Yhwh alone….”
The first two commandments thus testify to Judaism’s emergence as a monotheism from at least two previous polytheisms, those emerging in turn from a history of monotheisms (vide Ancient Greece, Rome, and modern Hinduism) in which priests and priestesses of the various gods and goddesses battled for supremacy. The vital question remains: what became of Ashera?
‘Missing goddess’ posters should arguably be plastered up all over the world: ‘Have you seen this goddess? REWARD!!!”
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablets_of_Stone#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20biblical%20narrative,(Exodus%2034%3A1).
I’ve never understood how number one could even count as a commandment. It’s a bit like Douglas Adams’ “I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondel.”
Well it’s a commandment the same way “I AM A WOMAN!!” is when it’s a man saying it.
I could be wrong about KJV. The text doesn’t mention a version, it only says the list is the same as the displayed in Texas in what became Orden v Perry.
https://legiscan.com/LA/text/HB71/id/3004342/Louisiana-2024-HB71-Enrolled.pdf
As has been pointed out many times, most of the 10 Commandments would be unconstitutional if turned into laws. Should it be actually illegal to worship a different god, swear, or be envious? Only murder, theft, and perjury (included in “false witness”) are actual crimes.
They could make a lesson on that.
I would much prefer the Bill of Rights be on the classroom wall.
If we’re going to put a list of ten imperatives, at least make it one to which we all theoretically assent.
If you are not envious, how would capitalism survive and thrive? A basic tenet of our society, consume, would fall.
The first thing I thought of was the workhouse scene in the movie Oliver! (the musical version of Oliver Twist) where on the wall of the workhouse refectory is painted GOD IS LOVE.
It’s hard to beat George Carlin’s great piece about the Ten Commandments. (I won’t link here because I recall YouTube tends to auto-embed, but it’s easy to find.)
Well iknklast, they’re not really all that interested in capitalism these days, are they? Free markets are a keystone of capitalism and they seem more interested in replacing our economy with something more similar to that of the Soviets (though not actually communist).
Actually it doesn’t say that, which is interesting. The Revised Standard version translates that verse as ‘You shall have no other gods before me’. The Septuagint, a translation into Greek made in the third century BCE, translates it to this effect: ‘You shall not have other gods besides me’ (my translation).
It would seem that the early Hebrews believed that there were other gods to which they were forbidden to pay tribute for fear of angering their Lord.
Yes monotheism was seen as quite silly and low-rent, wasn’t it? Why would you have just one when you can have lots?
Daily Kos presents “9 outrageous facts about Lousiana’s Ten Commandments law”. I’ll summarize the list here, with my own comments. Note that this is Daily Kos, so the outrage meter may be calibrated differently.
1. The version specified is not from any version of the bible, it’s what was upheld in Orden V Perry. I don’t know whether various Christian traditions have some official version of the 10C that is a merger of texts from the two books where the list appears, so this lack of exact match of any version of the bible may not be unique, but the Daily Kos writer seems to think it’s an unusual version.
2. No smaller than 11×14 inches.
3. The bill includes no funding. This is not surprising. I think it’s pretty clear that the bill is lawsuit bait.
4. The Mayflower Compact is called “America’s First Constitution”.
5. Legislators scoured US laws to find a mention of God, and they almost got one. They are requiring the display of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, a document I’ve never heard of, which encourages religion in schools.
After these five items, there is this note:
The remaining items are about other parts of the package, all stowaways on this damaged ship. The 10C section can be removed and the other parts of the package are still in place, hidden behind the uproar over the 10C bill.
6. Schools are prohibited from asking about vaccine status.
7. Teachers can be sued for using a student’s preferred name or pronouns. This provision I have little problem with, except that I don’t like force of law pushing this issue in this way. I don’t want teachers sued for “misgendering”, and I don’t want teachers sued for trying to placate simple demands of a student. Putting the wrong sex down in an official document, that’s a problem, but using pronouns or names in speech should not get someone in legal hot water. If the alternative is to require teachers to use “preferred pronouns”, I’d support the “sex-based pronouns” side.
8. A “Don’t Say Gay” bill “worse than Florida’s” was added almost without notice. There is to be no talk about sexual orientation, gender identity. Well, Daily Kos missed that discussion is allowed as part of curricula that meet state standards, but I’ll acknowledge that state standards may actually prohibit such curricular discussions.
9. It allows schools to appoint a volunteer chaplain.
Urrrgghh.