Dem
51
GOP
49
There's a new sheriff in town in Louisiana. Gov. Jeff Landry (R-LA) has only been on the job for about 6 months, but he's clearly tired of his peers Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Greg Abbott (R-TX) getting all the culture wars glory. So, he got to work on what was obviously a top-priority matter, and steered a bill through the Louisiana legislature requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom. The governor signed the bill into law yesterday afternoon.
This is an absolutely terrible idea. Obviously, it tramples all over separation of church and state, and turns classrooms into proselytization centers. If you're Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist or a member of some other religious tradition, and you're trying to learn in a classroom whose decorations imply that you're fundamentally wrong about your beliefs? Too bad!
Even if you're a believer in the Ten Commandments, however, and you are also not bothered by the church and state implications, it's still a bad idea. This is a historical document that is particularly dependent on context, and ripping it out of that context cheapens both the Commandments and the Bible. CNN had an op-ed about this yesterday; for our part, let's try to illustrate via analogy. This artwork is not too bad:
But isn't this orders of magnitude better?
Clipping out the Ten Commandments is not all that different than clipping out the moon from The Starry Night.
Yet another problem is that nobody is going to convert to Christianity because of a poster on a classroom wall. In fact, it is more likely to turn potential adherents off, than to bring them into the fold, particularly at a time when polls make clear that skepticism about religion is at an all-time high. No doubt, Landry knows this, and does not actually expect the proselytizing to have an effect.
Landry also knows something else: The bill he signed yesterday is illegal. The Supreme Court reached that exact conclusion in Stone v. Graham (1980). But the Governor figures he might as well take another whack at the piñata, given the makeup of the current Court. If he succeeds, he's a right-wing hero. If he fails, he's still a right-wing hero. We're not just speculating here; when Landry spoke to reporters yesterday, he said, "I can't WAIT to be sued!"
So, there's now another of these performative Southern governors, trying to set themselves up for the next stop in their political careers. Meanwhile, the folks who will be casting ballots in November of this year just keep getting reminder after reminder of how very much the people who control the Republican Party right now would love, love, love to make the U.S. into a theocracy. (Z)