Keep the 'Commandments'

Editorial

The Arizona Civil Liberties Union is calling for the removal of the Ten Commandments monument from Wesley Bolin Plaza, adjacent to the Capitol grounds.

AzCLU leaders claim the Judeo-Christian monument - situated on public land and maintained by public funds - violates the separation of church and state.

Seemingly similar efforts are occurring across the country:

The 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld a ruling on July 11 for the removal of a 5,280-pound granite Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building rotunda in Montgomery, Ala.
A U.S. District judge in Kentucky in June 2001 ordered the removal of Ten Commandments displays from state schools and courthouses.
The U.S. Supreme Court in February 2002 refused to hear an appeal to allow a limestone Ten Commandments monument to remain in front of the statehouse in Indianapolis.

There appears to be a distinction between these examples and the Bolin Plaza display. The location and prominence of the Alabama, Kentucky and Indiana monuments imply the Ten Commandments are government endorsed, since state employees and those who do business in these buildings can hardly avoid viewing them.

Wesley Bolin Plaza is different. The Ten Commandments monument is but one of many, and visitors and government employees need not walk through the plaza en route to the Capitol or the courthouse. Its location simply does not carry the message that the State is doing God's work.

The Ten Commandments monument is one among many commemorations of people, traditions and events, including the Vietnam War, Arizona Confederate soldiers, Jewish War Veterans, Armenian martyrs, and Father Albert Braun, a missionary, church founder and pioneer.

To remove any of these monuments could be to lose an opportunity for plaza visitors to learn about the culture, values, peoples and history of the American southwest and the state of Arizona.

In particular, the Ten Commandments monument suggests to passersby the importance of these values to many Arizonans. The monument might educate a Hindu or Sikh about a value system different from his own, just as the Vietnam memorial can teach someone too young to have served in the war about the heavy price of this faraway conflict.

The AzCLU will request the federal court to remove the Ten Commandments monument if it's still there on Aug. 8. Ultimately the AzCLU will not make the decision; the courts will.

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