Yeah, I totally agree.
I am tired of the feigned persecution and general whining that many Christians do. (The war on Christmas will begin in < 6 months!). As an atheist, the monument really bothers me.
They can’t put that on government property. The guy who paid for it can put 5000 on his lawn for all I care… I worry the same guy or someone else will just donate another, and we’ll be back at square one.
I wouldn’t mind having them sued into the ground. That could have bigger lasting effects.
‘On public property’ is not enough to solve the problem. A nearby town has a small park where four of the main streets meet. Every year at Christmas, they fill the park with decorations - Santa clauses, reindeer, giant toy soldiers, lights in the trees, and of course, the traditional manger scene. Eventually, the town got complaints about the manger scene being on public property. So they leased a 10x10 foot chunk of the park to a local church for $1 a year or something. The manger scene still goes up in the same spot every year, but now it’s on private property.
Personally, I think the manger scene is fine. It’s a temporary holiday symbol in amongst many other holiday symbols in a general place. That’s very different from permanently emplacing one single religion’s laws right in front of the courthouse or capitol. Maybe if they put up a whole walkway of monuments with historical laws from various cultures, like a museum of legal history, that would be acceptable. But that doesn’t really belong in front of the courthouse.
Anyway, beware the public land argument, because it can be rendered ineffective with a simple trivial lease deal. The argument needs to make clear that the specific location is wrong as well. If the people want a religious monument park or a legal history park, they can vote that in and put things like that there.
You may have missed a lot. 
He must have been NOT drinking.
Are you asking me? Ask a lawyer and a theologian.
Religion has its place in society, but it does not require government support or endorsement. One cannot protect religious freedom for all if government shows blatant favoritism to one. Our Founding Fathers recognized that early on. They knew all too well that sectarian discrimination is inevitable when religion is entangled with the apparatus of state.
The 10 Commandments and more importantly the specific wording chosen for the text used is a sign of government support of a specific religion and sect group in a way which is inherently exclusionary. (The first 3 of the commandments are specifically sectarian and exclusionary in nature and completely at odds with our society).
My point was the claim that any given religious text is unambiguously good or bad is a load of bull. It is all a matter of how it is used and for what purposes. The purpose of the decalogue here was to put a government endorsed “tramp stamp” on Evangelical Protestant faith in a public space. Declaring government belongs to them alone.
I am not suggesting it does.
The monument suggested it all by itself.
And from the beginning I said it shouldn’t be on government land.
The monument itself at a church or where ever would be fine.
It’s akin to the sousaphone at the KKK march, exposing one’s opponent as a paper tiger even as he’s attempting to project power.
So is a KKK guy with sousaphone allowed to play Wagner during a Holocaust remembrance ceremony? Each sousaphone guy is essentially starting a counter-demonstration. Which is why police usually separate demonstrators into their distinct camps.
A KKK guy shouting at an ethnic pride parade is displaying fear in response to an expression of social tolerance, and really only undermines himself by reminding everyone what minorities have to put up with. The sousaphone guy is displaying humor in response to a display of power, thereby revealing it to be without force. They’re both forms of demonstration, but the difference is in who is displaying fear and who is trying to elicit it.
Violations of dignity beget violence.
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Well, if that is your rules set, you’re going to have a bad time if you are in the minority view. Because if the gloves are off and violence is permitted, the minority is going to suffer every time.
Atheists are the minority. We cannot be using violence to settle scores. (And even if atheists were the majority it wouldn’t be right.) Let the ACLU get the monument off public land, through the legal system.
yes, they’ll totally crucify me.
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