Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image
Are you wondering just what the hell Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court is doing? He's the Ten Commandments monument guy.
I mean, he's a judge. He had to know what the reaction from the Feds would be. His case is as weak as Fox News' case against Al Franken was. He's claiming his defying the law is the same sort of action Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took in Birmingham, the actions that landed him in the cell in which he wrote "Letter From A Birmingham Jail."
In interviews, Moore has argued that he is doing no less than what the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. did when he disobeyed police and ended up in jail in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. He also has remarked, "I believe you should obey higher courts except when that higher court is not going by the law."
Of course it doesn't meet the standard of civil disobedience set forth in that letter. And if he was really the Biblical literalist he claims to be, he'd be supporting reparations for Black Americans:
There are three versions of the Decalogue mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament). All are different. They are at Exodus 20:2-17, Exodus 34:12-26, and Deuteronomy 5:6-21. The Qur'an, the Holy book of Islam, all discusses God giving tablets to Moses containing laws, but do not list the commands.
Although most North Americans hold the Ten Commandments in extremely high esteem, many are not particularly familiar with many of their features:
- The Decalogue contains on the order of 22 commandments, not ten.
- Most people incorrectly believe that the Commandments govern moral behavior in society -- to not lie, steal, commit adultery, commit perjury, etc. In reality, the first four commandments are religious in nature, uniquely related to the worship of Yahweh. When promoted by the government, they are quite offensive to the followers of many adults who do not happen to worship the God of the Hebrew Scriptures.
- Some theologians believe that there are two commandments which are routinely broken by many Christians: the possession of images and failure to observe the Sabbath.
- The Commandment in Exodus 20:5 (the first of ten Roman Catholics and some Lutherans, and the second of ten for other Christians and Jews) promises that the children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and great great grandchildren will be punished for the misdeeds of their fathers. Most Americans would find this an immoral concept -- to punish individuals for the actions of an ancestor, perhaps before they were born.
[p6: emphasis added]
He even invokes the same rationale ex-Gov. Faubus used in an attempt to block school desegregation in Arkansas:
The Federal Courts, specifically the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, does not have the authority to order him, as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, to remove the monument. This argument recalls the conflict in Little Rock, AR, when Governor Faubus attempted to impose state law in contradiction of a court order to integrate the schools. He, and the governors of some other Southern states, argued that the federal courts had no authority to order them to desegregate their schools. "In each case, the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court disagreed, principally relying upon the supremacy clause of the Constitution. That clause makes federal law supreme over conflicting state law."
Ahhhhh…a clue.
Now check out Mac Diva's write up on the good justice's extracurricular activites. Follow the links and do the math.
Posted by P6 at August 26, 2003 07:37 PM
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