The Louisiana legislature has voted in favor of a bill, HB 71, that would require the 10 Commandments to be posted in all public schools in the state, which includes K-12 and all colleges and universities. The House vote was 82-19 and the Senate vote was 30-8. The bill has now been sent back to the House for a second vote. In all likelihood it will pass again by a large margin and will then be sent to Louisiana Governor Landry for his signature to make it a law. Landry is a Christian theocrat and a long-time active member of the religious right who probably looks forward to signing the unconstitutional religious bill into law. If it does become law, Louisiana will become the first US state to require the 10 Commandments to be posted in its public schools.
The author of the bill is Representative Dodie Horton. She's a Christian theocrat who last year authored a bill that was passed into law that requires all public schools to display the US motto "In God We Trust". Many people mistakenly believe this motto is from America's Founders. It is not. The Founders used the Latin phrase "E pluribus unum", which translates to "out of many, one." This was America's de facto motto until the US Congress changed it to "In God We Trust" in 1956.
The Louisiana 10 Commandments bill requires the text of the Ten Commandments to be printed on a poster no smaller than 11 inches by 14 inches and that the words be the central focus of the document. This makes me wonder if they will include whom the 10 Commandments are addressed to.
The 10 Commandments appear in the Hebrew Bible (which the Christians have claimed as their own and renamed it as the Old Testament) in two places, Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21. Both start out with God addressing the 10 Commandments to only the Jews and not to anyone else. The ancient Jewish clergymen who wrote the Hebrew Bible, including the 10 Commandments, claim God said, "I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage." This makes clear the 10 Commandments are only for Jews and not for Gentiles as it is referring to the fictional story of the Exodus in which the Jews were allegedly slaves in ancient Egypt until God forced the Egyptians to set them free (a great book that points out the biblical story of Passover and the Exodus never happened is The Bible Unearthed: Archeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman). This fact is ignored by the Christian theocrats.
Horton said, "I hope and I pray that Louisiana is the first state to allow moral code to be placed back in the classrooms." She, along with her fellow Christian theocrats, must not realize the 10 Commandments are actually immoral as they promote slavery and are misogynistic. They are pro-slavery because they only instruct Jews not to covet their neighbors' slaves and do not prohibit slavery. They are also misogynistic in that they refer to wives in the same category as slaves, ox and asses. This is evident in the 10th commandment. It states,
"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's."
When Horton introduced the bill in April, she was asked about its impact on people who do not believe in the 10 Commandments. She replied,
"I'm not concerned with an atheist. I'm not concerned with a Muslim. I'm concerned with our children looking and seeing what God's law is."
Her statement shows us why it is so important for Deists and all freethinkers to DO all we can to get the word out about Deism to as many people as we can. Way too many good and sincere people are under the influence of "revealed" religions. They sincerely believe the Bible, Quran and/or Book of Mormon are God's Word and the 10 Commandments are God's laws. Deism can empower them to free themselves from these dangerous falsehoods. We can let them know about important facts such as America was not founded as a Christian nation and that the references to God in the Declaration of Independence are Deistic references, plus so much more. This knowledge will protect them from religious theocrats and charlatans and the lies they tell, which will in turn help to protect all of us from the repressive and irrational theocracy the theocrats are working towards.
