In a blatant violation of the separation of church and state, the Tennessee House unanimously passed a bill allowing public buildings to brazenly display the Ten Commandments along with other “historically significant documents.” This includes courthouses, the governor’s mansion, the legislature, and other state governmental buildings.
According to The Tennessean, “the chamber voted 93-0 in favor of the bill sponsored by Republican Rep. Matthew Hill of Jonesborough on Monday with minimal debate. The measure would allow the documents to be displayed in the form of statues, monuments, memorials, tablets or in any other way that in the words of the legislation “respects the dignity and solemnity of such documents.””
Besides the fact that the bill gives public buildings a free pass to discriminate against the “historically significant documents” of other religions, the bill basically respects an establishment of the Christian religion which violates the Constitution. It allows every public building to erect monuments and the like to glorify a Christian doctrine that has nothing to do with United States history. The Founding Fathers would frown upon this bill, because if they had really wanted America to be a Christian state, they would have said as much in the Constitution. None of our first Presidents ever declared a national religion and they certainly never tried to glorify the Ten Commandments. Doing so violates religious freedom of others. Now, if the Tennessee House had simply made it legal for private citizens to display the Commandments on their own property, which they can already do, that’s fine. But allowing public buildings that serve everyone including non-Christians to publicly declare an allegiance to a specific religion is crossing the line.
It comes as no surprise that the Republican Party is leading the charge in their new crusade against everything that isn’t Christian. For years, they have made a strong concerted effort to declare Christianity as the national religion in direct violation of the Constitution. They seek to force public school students to pray, and they want educators to indoctrinate students in the Christian religion by teaching Biblically based theories that are mere pseudo-science belonging in church alone. Republicans do this all while demonizing other religions such as Islam. And frankly, Democrats also should be ashamed to have helped pass this bill. But I guess in Tennessee, Democratic and Republican politicians are all alike in their sheer hatred of other religions.
