A monument with the Ten Commandments has been placed in the Alabama Supreme Court’s rotunda at the order of Chief Justice Roy Moore, who was elected to the position last November.
The 4-foot-tall, 5,280-pound Ten Commandments monument was placed in the Supreme Court building in Montgomery during the night of July 31. Moore did not consult with his fellow justices, said Charles Houston, a fellow state Supreme Court justice.
Moore as a chief justice has the authority to handle administrative matters relating to the court, an attorney for Moore, Stephen Melchoir, told the Associated Press.
“To restore morality, we must first recognize the source from which all morality springs,” Moore said in a brief ceremony to unveil the monument Aug. 1. “From our earliest history in 1776 when we were declared to be the United States of America, our forefathers recognized the sovereignty of God.”
Quotes from the historic figures and documents have been engraved on the base beneath the monument’s stone tablets with the Ten Commandments.
Moore, a Baptist layman who came into the national spotlight for fighting to display the Ten Commandments in a county courthouse, also said in his remarks to several dozen people, “When I ran for the office of chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, I made a pledge to restore the moral foundation of law. May this day mark the beginning of the restoration of the moral foundation of law to our people and a return to the knowledge of God in our land.”
An attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Joel Sokol, said his group is exploring possible legal action and believes that “courts should enforce secular law and not God’s law.”
If the Ten Commandments monument’s “primary thrust is a religious thrust,” then it is a violation of church and state, Sokol told The Birmingham News.
“If the Ten Commandments display the part of an overall larger display involving the development of law in this country, then it is clearly permissible,” Sokol said. “The Ten Commandments has a role in the development of our secular law.”
Moore prevailed against that ACLU in his prior battle over the hand-carved wooden Ten Commandments plaque he displayed as a circuit judge in Etowah Country.
No government funds were used to create the Ten Commandments monument or place it in the Supreme Court rotunda, Moore said, telling reporters that he and a sculptor from Huntsville and other private donors had covered its cost.
(BP)
Share with others: