South Dakota Lawmakers Latest Asshats Seeking To Force Schools To Post The Ten Commandments

Legal Issues

from the not-how-any-of-this-works dept

It’s 2025 and we’re still stuck with legislators who wish it was still 1725. Or possibly any year with B.C appended.

Clearly unconstitutional laws are being crafted with alarming frequency these days. Those that aren’t trying to legislate morality or criminalize sexual preferences are trying to infuse government entities with state-approved religion. A lot of lawmakers seem pissed that this nation, along with its laws and constitutional protections, no longer deem everyone but straight white males to be 3/5ths of a person, at best.

So, here we go again, this time in the state I have the continued misfortune of residing in. (See also: Trumpette Kristi Noem, who is currently employed as the head of the DHS.) Idiotic legislators, who think they can impose “values” derived from a presumptively fictional book, are back at work trying to make things worse for long-held constitutional rights.

Here’s Joshua Haiar, reporting for the fiercely independent South Dakota Searchlight.

A committee of South Dakota lawmakers voted 4-3 to endorse a bill Thursday in Pierre that would require public school districts to teach the Ten Commandments and display them in every classroom.

The vote came after an hour of testimony that included opposition from public school groups. The legislation now heads to the full state Senate. 

The bill would mandate 8-by-14-inch posters with “easily readable font.” It would repeal existing language in state law allowing local school boards to choose to display the Ten Commandments.

Compelling public entities to post a document that highlights one specific — and state-approved, so to speak — religion is already a major First Amendment problem. But this bill goes further than others of its kind. It also mandates indoctrination.

The bill would also require the Ten Commandments to be taught as part of history and civics classes three times during a student’s education — at least once during each of the elementary, middle and high school years.

If the first part of the law doesn’t kill it, the second certainly will. There’s no rational defense of this bill by any of its supporters. Instead, you get weird anecdata that pretends school books first published in 1687 and 1836 are the perfect model for instruction in a nation that has since (1) ratified a Constitution and several Amendments, and (2) abolished slavery, given women the right to vote, and passed several civil rights bills.

A freshman lawmaker, Sen. John Carley, R-Piedmont, introduced the bill. He said early American textbooks, like the New England Primer and McGuffey Readers, featured the Ten Commandments.

So what? Lots of things happened back then, most of them bad enough they resulted in new laws and the expansion of rights to cover far more people either of these authors — much less the Biblical “God” that apparently handed these down to a guy who happened to own one of the only chisels in town. That something was considered ok in the past is not a great indicator of future success. After all, slavery was still acceptable when both of these books were still in their heyday.

And, for some reason, South Dakota’s legislature was graced with the presence of a Texas interloper who is attempting to infect as many local legislatures with his particular brand of anti-constitutional zealotry.

Elijah O’Neal from the American Journey Experience Museum in Texas also spoke in favor of the bill. The museum’s website says it covers topics including “Biblical Worldview” and “Christianity’s Influence in America.” He said the Ten Commandments provide timeless moral guidance.

O’Neal also spoke on behalf of WallBuilders, a Texas-based organization supporting  similar legislation in North Dakota. The organization says it helps Americans “celebrate and safeguard the authentic history of our nation.”

WallBuilders does nothing of the sort and neither does O’Neal’s other main business interest, the American Journey Experience Museum. The authentic history of our nation contains multiple violations of the Ten Commandments by those who proclaimed to respect it while pretending it didn’t apply to them if they claimed they were just performing “God’s” work.

And the American Journey Experience Museum only wants to present a very specific subset of American history — something’s that immediately apparent from the time-period the so-called “museum” chooses to present to visitors:

The American Journey Experience is a state-of-the-art museum and research library focusing on American history from Christopher Columbus to the Space Race.

Nice. That way presenters can pretend American history can conveniently ignore all the history that happened before some Italian with a boat accidentally discovered a land that hadn’t been colonized yet. And it ends with our supposed victory over Russia and its succession of dictators — something that has deliberately skewed as a victory over the ideal of Communism itself.

The bill has its opponents, including pretty much every public school association in the state. But the article notes some leaders of religious entities are opposed to this bill as well.

This law won’t remain law for long if it gets passed. Unfortunately, this won’t stop more attempts from being made elsewhere. Nor will courtroom losses (paid for with tax dollars) deter O’Neal from personally profiting from pitching bad laws to worse legislators. After all, everyone else covers the cost of this expensive frivolity, which is really nothing more than anthropomorphic junk mail, but junk that actually knows a little bit about its targets.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, establishment clause, free speech, freedom of religion, south dakota, ten commandments, unconstitutional
Companies: american journey experience museum