News from the Plains: All this RED can make you BLUE
How to stop a Christian
by Barry Friedman
And Jesus wasn't even in this movie.
Ritze ... said Cecil B. DeMille, director of the 1956 film epic “The Ten Commandments,” gave money to the Fraternal Order of Eagles to fund monuments across the country depicting the commandments. Some of the film's main stars, such as Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner, went to unveilings.
So, in 2009, State Representative Mike Ritze, R-Broken Arrow (and is it just me or do they always seem to have "R-" after their names?) found his muse. With his family, he decided to foot the bill for a Ten Commandments monument to be erected near the state capitol in Oklahoma City.
The Founding Fathers likely would be amazed there is any controversy over a Ten Commandments monument, Ritze said.
Yeah, how much?
“The Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”
~1797 Treaty of Tripoli signed by John Adams
For starters, DeMille was a whore.
A peerless self-promoter, the late Ten Commandments director might see the battle being waged in the U.S. Supreme Court as the ultimate publicity stunt — as well as a moral crusade.
DeMille actually helped establish the battleground. He played a role in getting the granite replica of the Commandments placed outside the Texas Capitol. He skillfully avoided footing the bill for the tablets, leaving that to the Fraternal Order of Eagles. The service organization was already distributing written copies of the Commandments across America in 1951, in hopes of combatting juvenile delinquency.
DeMille's Ten Commandments premiered in 1956. Learning of the Eagles' work — and keen to promote his film with their cause — the director encouraged the group to donate carved stone tablets like those that star Charlton Heston, as Moses, brandished in the movie.
Ritze and his family paid approximately ten grand for the monument (they cut back, apparently, on
proofreading) and it was completed in 2012. Sensing a possible court challenged, he, along with something called the
Liberty Institute, promised to pay for and fight any legal battles that might result from it.
Legal battles, line one!
The American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma on Monday filed suit seeking to have a monument displaying the Ten Commandments removed from the Capitol grounds.
Proponents, especially Ritze, contend the monument is simple history. Further, Ritze says there are similar monuments erected in such religious tolerant bastions as Utah and Texas.
“It is a historical presentation of where we get our laws,” Ritze said.
Except, you know, it's
not.
“Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.”
~Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814,
And even if it were, we are not all Christian in Oklahoma--nor want to be!
The monument was placed in a setting with no other monuments or memorials, which "lends to the monument's effect of conveying state endorsement and support of its explicitly religious message," the suit says.
But let's go to the tablet, shall we?
On it, the First Amendment reads: "I AM the LORD thy God, thou shalt have no other Gods before me."
Two things:
1) God spoke in Caps?, and
2) In the Jewish Bible (Old Testament for you west coast Jews, as Mort Sahl used to say), the first commandment reads, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me."
That Egypt business, I have to tell you, is a pretty big deal for Jews, and Ritze has a pair of fundamentalist balls to say, "The placement of this monument shall not be construed to mean that the State of Oklahoma favors any particular religion or denomination thereof over others," especially when one of Judaism's heavy hitters thinks the omitted part is the most important part of what God gave Charlton Heston on Sinai.
The medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides argued this was the greatest Commandment of all, even though it does not actually command anyone to do anything at all, because it forms the basis for monotheism and for all that follows.
This, too ...
In the Torah these words are never referred to as the Ten Commandments. In the Torah, they are called Aseret ha-D'varim (Ex. 34:28, Deut. 4:13 and Deut. 10:4). In rabbinical texts, they are referred to as Aseret ha-Dibrot. The words d'varim and dibrot come from the Hebrew root Dalet-Beit-Reish, meaning word, speak or thing; thus, the phrase is accurately translated as the Ten Sayings, the Ten Statements, the Ten Declarations, the Ten Words or even the Ten Things, but not as the Ten Commandments, which would be Aseret ha-Mitzvot.
Sorry for the length, but that's what happens when you start cherry-picking the word of God--your religion sounds like you found it on Wikipedia and you're the only one updating the entry. Jews--and for that matter Muslims, Atheists, Shintoists, Buddhists, Taoists, Catholics, and other Christians with different viewpoints-- do not want or need
Ritze, an "ordained Southern Baptist Deacon and Sunday School teacher at Arrow Heights Baptist Church" and someone who believes America is a "Christian" nation, acting as our docent when we have business at the state capitol.
And here's what Chief Justice Warren Burger said in LEMON v. KURTZMAN.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Burger articulated a three-part test for laws dealing with religious establishment. To be constitutional, a statute must
a) Have "a secular legislative purpose,"
b) It must have principal effects which neither advance nor inhibit religion, and
c) It must not foster "an excessive government entanglement with religion."
Let's see: No, No, and No.
The only way the state could have gotten more egregious is to have a church erected on the Capitol grounds, said Brady Henderson, ACLU of Oklahoma legal
director.
And the only thing that stops a bad Christian with The Commandments is a good Christian with The Constitution.