Monument 'patriots' miss point

For something that's been around the past 3,500 years and is about as straightforward as a fastball, the Ten Commandments do have a knack for staying controversial.

Not the actual commandments. They have stood the test of time. Ever since Moses brought them down from the mountaintop people may have grumbled about them, argued about them, broken them and occasionally rebelled against them, but there has been little dispute that they qualify as decent basic moral standards.

The controversy revolves around where they can be posted.

The most recent chapter in a big book of conflict involves a judge in Alabama who refused to move a Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the state Supreme Court building. Roy Moore, the state's chief justice, was suspended for refusing to obey a district court order, and the monument, all 5,280 pounds of it, was hauled to the ground and sent to storage.

Dozens, if not hundreds, of similar monuments have suffered the same fate during the past couple of decades as courts have ruled on the question of separation of religion and government with the essential declaration Thou Shalt Not Put the Ten Commandments in Public Places. That includes here in Utah, where Ten Commandments plaques have been removed from public grounds in Salt Lake City, Ogden and several other Utah cities.

Every time this happens, emotions tend to flare. In the aftermath of Roy Moore's tantrum in Alabama, the reverberations could be heard as far away as St. George, Utah, where it was reported that more than a hundred people turned out in a rally to support Moore. One St. George resident, Robert Anderson, went so far as to make up hundreds of weather-resistant cardboard Ten Commandment signs that have since sprung up defiantly on lawns, store windows and porches from St. George to La Verkin.

But so far, no courthouses — even though that would be the only protest that would be germane to the issue.

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In none of the court rulings that have ordered Ten Commandments monuments from public grounds has there been a single negative commentary on the content of those monuments. No one's banning the book, just the venue. In Alabama, the district court only ruled that having the monument in the state building was an "improper government endorsement of religion." The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seconded that judgment.

People like Joe Moore, Robert Anderson and other "patriots" who protest what they perceive as disrespect for the Ten Commandments miss the point entirely.