Myth #9: The Eagles Tombstones are Passive

[Chapter 9, post #11]

“Whatever may be the fate of the Lemon test in the larger scheme of Establishment Clause jurisprudence, we think it not useful in dealing with the sort of passive monument that Texas has erected on its Capitol grounds.”[1] (Emphasis added.)

“Texas’ placement of the Commandments monument on its capitol grounds is a far more passive use of those texts than was the case in Stone, where the text confronted elementary school students every day.”[2] (Emphasis added.)

Chief Justice Rehnquist

This deception of the Chief Justice is all about banding.  Brand the Eagles-donated Ten Commandments with an innocuous term like “passive,” repeat the term a few times and hopefully dissidents will be lulled into believing that the monument is a victim rather than an aggressor. 

If by “passive” Chief Justice Rehnquist meant that the granite rock doesn’t move, speak or light up, he is correct.  But the inference that the monument does “no evil” belies the motive and harm of the Eagles’ tombstone to Jesus Christ.

Justice Souter was not fooled by the Chief Justice: “Placing a monument on the ground is not more ‘passive’ than hanging a sheet of paper on a wall when both contain the same text to be read by anyone who looks at it.”[3]

 

Nor was Justice Stevens fooled: “The monolith displayed on Texas Capitol grounds cannot be discounted as a passive acknowledgment of religion . . .   This Nation’s resolute commitment to neutrality with respect to religion is flatly inconsistent with the plurality’s wholehearted validation of an official state endorsement of the message that there is one, and only one, God.”[4]
 
The Eagles’ tombstone fundamentally commands the people to Texas to obey “God’s laws” and marks the territory upon which the monument sits as “Christian.”[5]  To allow Texas monolith and the remaining one hundred plus Eagles Ten Commandments monuments to remain on public property is to destroy the secular foundation upon which the United States is built and to relegate persons of minority faiths and those of no faith into second class citizenship.

Accordingly, the author finds that the commanding nature of the Eagles-donated Ten Commandments tombstone to be aggressive (if not coercive) and, therefore, not passive.

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[1]  Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677, 686 (2005).

[2]  Id., at 691.  “Stone” is referring to Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39 (1980) wherein the Court held a Kentucky’s statute requiring the posting of a copy of the Ten Commandments on the wall of each public classroom violated the Establishment Clause.

[3]  Id, at 747 (Souter, J., dissenting with whom Stevens, J., and Ginsburg, J., joined).  The “sheet of paper” Justice Souter is referring to are the copies of the Ten Commandments posted on the walls of Kentucky public schools.  See fn. 118.

[4]  Id, at 712 (Stevens, J., dissenting with whom Ginsburg, J.,  joined).

[5]  The territory here being the Texas State Capitol grounds, is a metaphor for the entire State of Texas.