Amid the rolling hills of rural southwest Ohio, four high schools feature identical sets of five monuments placed neatly in front of their new buildings.
Each of the tombstone like monuments highlights a different legal code, such as the Declaration of Independence and the Magna Carta. But the monument in the center, with the Ten Commandments etched in granite, is the one that has sparked controversy.
School officials contend the monuments—donated by a private group of ministers and laypeople—belong there and have appealed a June district court decision declaring them unconstitutional.
“Our belief is that the monuments are there not primarily as a religious statement but as a historical reminder of our system of law and government in the United States and to show that it has very deep-seated roots in biblical times,” said Roy Hill, superintendent of the Adams County/ Ohio Valley School District.
The Ohio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) disagrees and filed a suit on behalf of a community activist who lives in the area and is offended by the monuments.
“They’re undeniably religious,” said Raymond Vasari, legal director of the ACLU of Ohio. “They are sacred texts to believing Christians and Jews.”
Two years ago there were about a dozen legal cases working their way through the courts regarding the posting of Ten Commandments on public property—from schools to parks to city halls. Now the number has risen to about 20, legal experts say.
“It may be that both sides are getting more aggressive about litigation,” said Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Texas in Austin. “You’re not going to get a national consensus on this.”
He said legal uncertainty lingers because the one Supreme Court decision addressing the matter—specifically with public schools, declaring unconstitutional a Kentucky law requiring they be posed in classrooms.
Another catalyst for the suits, said Laycock, was the publicity about Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, who first became famous for putting Ten Commandments in his courtroom when we was a circuit court judge. More recently, Moore has drawn headlines—and a suit—for placing a two-and-a-half ton Ten Commandments monument in the lobby of the state judicial building.
Ken Johnson, who founded Adams County for the Ten Commandments, says of Moore: “He’s my hero.”
Johnson, along with other pro-commandments activists in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Tennessee, is forming a network to foster continued court action in support of posting the biblical laws in public places. In his county, he said, the monument sends a “signal” to students, teachers and community members.
“We wanted them for just a good moral code, to show respect for God and respect toward men,” said Johnson, who is pastor of a United Methodist church in Seaman.
Vasvari hails recent decisions against the monuments in cases in states where Johnson and other leaders are networking to keep them up.
“It does say something when you have… nine district courts in rapid succession in a variety of circumstances, handing down the same ruling,” he said.
Recent defeats in some courts have not dissuaded supporters from their cause. Frank Manion, senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), is defending the Adams County school district and urged its leaders to add the four additional monuments to possibly bolster their case. He’s also representing commandment supporters in eight other cases, including Judge James DeWesse of Richland County, Ohio, who has appealed a district court decision in hopes of keeping a poster of the commandments in a gilded frame on the wall of his courtroom.
“They all seem to say …government can display the Ten Commandments in an appropriate context,” said Manion, whose legal organization was founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson. “The question is, how do you find out until you get sued and go through the whole process whether your context is appropriate?”
Adding to the confusion, he said are conflicting decisions by appellate courts.
“The same monument is illegal in Elkhart (Ind.) and Indianapolis, but it’s legal in Denver and Salt Lake City under the same provision of the constitution,” Manion said.
Based on recent court decisions, some of the monuments have come down. At least one—in Chester County, Pa., which dated to the early 1900s—was recently covered up, pending appeals.
One of the newer court cases regards a La Crosse, Wis., monument donated by a fraternal organization in the 1960s to the city and located in a park.
A suit filed July 1 by the freedom from Religion Foundation prompted the city council to vote about a week later to sell the property to the group that gave it to the city.
The first commandment alone –“Thou shalt have no other gods before me”—prompted the suit, said Anne Gaylor, president of the Madison, Wis.-based foundation.
“In our country, we are free to have to have any god we like, as many as we like, or none at all, if that’s what we prefer,” she said. “Government should be neutral in matters of religion and you are hardly neutral if you are telling the community to worship and which god to worship.”
Marty Kurian, manager of La Crosse Aerie 1254 of the Fraternal Order of Eagles, said his organization donated the monument in honor of local residents after their sandbagging efforts during a serious flood.
Mayor John Medinger, who has followed the recent court decisions, has argued before the suit was filed that it might be wise to move it to private property. He declined offers from the ACLJ and others to defend the city.
Now with plans to fence it in at its present location and place signs explaining it is not city property, he thinks it could appear that the biblical laws have been corralled.
“Even though I supported this idea to sell the land in the park, I think people are not going to like it when it’s done,” he said. “They’re going to be offended…It is a compromise that really didn’t please either side.”
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