A California public school district may put the Ten Commandments in classrooms
The Kern County Board of Education is scheduled to hear a pastor's proposal next week
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On Tuesday, when the Kern County Board of Education in California has its next meeting, the agenda will include two presentations to put the Ten Commandments in every classroom in the district.
And if that wasn’t ominous enough, get this:
Robert Meszaros, spokesman for the Kern County Superintendent of Schools, confirmed to The Bee that the items will be discussed at the board’s next meeting, at the request of two unspecified individuals.
Two randos with a Christian agenda are going to try to convince board members to pursue an illegal course of action in the name of Jesus. Why did the Board agree to let these people waste their time? More on that in a moment, but it doesn’t bode well. One of the presentations will focus on why the Ten Commandments have a historic basis for being in the classrooms while the other will focus on the legal basis for approving the plan.
All this is happening while those very same arguments have failed in Louisiana, where Republicans passed a law to do the exact same thing, using the exact same arguments, only to be thwarted, at least for now, by a federal judge.
When that federal judge said last month that Louisiana’s law was unconstitutional, he directly rebutted the supposed argument from historicity:
In sum, the historical evidence showed that the instances of using the Ten Commandments in public schools were too “scattered” to amount to “convincing evidence that it was common” at the time of the Founding or incorporation of the First Amendment to utilize the Decalogue in public-school education... That is, the evidence demonstrates that the practice at issue does not fit within and is otherwise not consistent with a broader historical tradition during those time periods.
What do they know in Kern County that the entire state of Louisiana missed? Not much, apparently. The county ranks among the worst in the state on nearly every academic metric:
No amount of shoving Christianity in kids’ faces is going to help them get a better education. And the inevitable lawsuit if this plan goes through could mean even less money available for student achievement.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is calling for the district to reject the proposal before it gets embroiled in a legal battle. A letter to the school board from attorney Chris Line highlights why this would be a disastrous idea. He brings up the Supreme Court ruling from nearly five decades ago, Stone v. Graham, which declared a Ten Commandments-in-Schools law unconstitutional. But then he points out that putting up the Ten Commandments as part of a broader display, which the Supreme Court has allowed in certain situations, still wouldn’t apply to public schools:
Although the Supreme Court allowed a long-standing Ten Commandments monument on government property in one unique context, the Court made clear that such displays in public schools are unconstitutional. The Court distinguished that case from the school context. In his controlling opinion, Justice Breyer wrote, “This case, moreover, is distinguishable from instances where the Court has found Ten Commandments displays impermissible.
Even beyond the legal precedent, there’s no good reason to try this. I’ve said this before but it bears repeating: It’s genuinely bizarre that the same people who don’t want students learning about sex, systemic racism, or LGBTQ people have very specific things they want kindergartners to know about adultery and their neighbor’s maidservants. (If that line were in a library book, you know these same Christians would try to get it banned.)
No potential school shooter has ever plotted out a path of destruction only to reconsider after realizing the Ten Commandments say “Thou shalt NOT kill.” If students need a sign to remind them not to murder others, they have bigger issues.
It goes without saying that several of the Commandments are flat-out useless when it comes to instilling morality since they forbid believing in false gods, making “graven images,” taking God’s name in vain, and not keeping the Sabbath day holy.
What was the educational benefit of telling children they couldn’t have other gods before the One True Christian God™? Or that they couldn’t make false idols? Or they couldn’t take God’s name in vain? Or that they had to rest on Sunday? Or that they couldn’t have sex with people they’re not married to? Or that they couldn’t want what their neighbors have? Beats me.
More than anything, the symbolic act of putting up the Christian rules sends a message that non-Christian students are second-class citizens. California’s own Constitution, Line points out, prohibits religious preference as well as discrimination.
Then Line goes for the jugular by explaining how FFRF has won similar cases against other school districts that decided promoting Christianity mattered more than educating students.
FFRF and several families filed federal lawsuits against two school districts in Pennsylvania for refusing to remove unconstitutional Ten Commandments displays… In both of these cases, the school districts were required to remove the displays and pay FFRF’s attorneys’ fees.
…
… When FFRF secured a court order in our Chino Valley case regarding school board prayers, the court ordered the district to pay more than $200,000 in the plaintiffs’ attorney fees and costs... After appeal, the court ordered the district to pay an additional $75,000 for plaintiffs’ attorney fees and costs associated with the appeal for a total of more than a quarter million dollars.
That’s all a way of saying the Ten Commandments proposal should be a non-starter. Even if the strangers can give their presentations, the Board is under no obligation to take any of it seriously.
The Board’s president told local media that the presentations were merely informational and no actions would be taken at the upcoming meeting, but that’s not the same thing as saying no vote will ever be taken on the matter because it’s never going to happen.
There is an online petition that calls for the Board to reject the proposal. While those kinds of petitions carry no weight, they can help raise awareness and get people to the meeting in order to oppose the idea.
All that said, I think I can shed some light on who’s speaking at the upcoming board meeting even if the board’s president didn’t name them directly to the media.
Back in September, a local pastor, Angelo Frazier, cosplaying as Moses, spoke in front of the Kern County Board of Education and told them he wanted time to deliver a more formal presentation in the future.
He said that Stone v. Graham was wrongly decided and that the recent Bremerton case made the Ten Commandments legal in public schools… which it didn’t. He cited the recent Louisiana law, though his speech was given before that law was declared unconstitutional. He mentioned how Oklahoma’s public schools superintendent Ryan Walters recently mandated the Ten Commandments in schools, without bringing up how that mandate carried no legal weight or that leaders of several large public school districts had ignored his thoughtless demands.
And after Frazier spoke, he was followed by several other Christian Nationalists who urged the Board to consider his proposal. (One of them insanely claimed that the Ten Commandments could stop school shootings... which would only be true if you used them as a shield.)
Frazier later bragged about his presentation on Instagram:
He also posted a picture of him and his buddies:
He is now encouraging people to come to the meeting on December 17, presumably to hear his presentation. (Frazier did not respond to a request for comment.)
He noted in his captions that at least two of the seven board members were opposed to his idea while the others were at least open to hearing him out. What that means in terms of a future vote is unclear. But you can always reach out to the board members and let them know why approving such a horrible idea would be disastrous, ethically and financially, on their end.
Religion has no place in schools!
It belongs in the fiction department of the local library
It's telling that they always want the ten commandments posted and never the Beatitudes or John 3:16.
They want to instill authoritarianism in kids.