Ruling that marker is secular stirs debate

A local civil rights attorney will soon ask the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider its unique opinion that the Ten Commandments are not religious in nature.

Attorney Brian Barnard plans to file an immediate appeal of U.S. District Judge Bruce Jenkins' recent ruling affirming the Circuit Court's 1973 decision and dismissing his client's challenge of the public display of a Ten Commandments monument in Pleasant Grove.

The Society of Separationists sued the city in September, alleging the display of the monolith in Pleasant Grove City Park unconstitutionally endorses one religion over another.

In his Friday ruling, Jenkins upheld the earlier appeals court ruling that the Ten Commandments are "primarily secular, and not religious in character; that neither its purpose or effect tends to establish religious belief."

The 31-year-old ruling was made in a lawsuit challenging the display of a Ten Commandments monolith on Salt Lake City property.

Barnard said the 10th Circuit's analysis is unlike any other rulings in cases involving Ten Commandments displays across the country. In other cases, he said, the religious nature of the commandments is automatically assumed. "Those cases don't even discuss whether they're religious in nature," Barnard said.

Jenkins noted that although he was bound by federal rules of procedure to follow the appellate court's earlier decision and rule in favor of the city, he was not inclined to rule otherwise even if given the option.

"No one and no religion has an exclusive claim to the icons of history. History belongs to all," Jenkins wrote. "The placement and display of the monolith at issue in this case is primarily secular in purpose, as an acknowledgment of one historic source of guidance and direction, one time-honored source of standards of human conduct."

The Ten Commandments, the judge said, are "as much for the benefit of the unchurched or non-religious as for the benefit of more than one evolving religious tradition."

The American Center for Law & Justice, which represents Pleasant Grove and is involved in more than a dozen Ten Commandments lawsuits nationwide, praised Jenkins' decision.