In the summer of 1997, I was a resident of Chester County, Pennsylvania. I'd lived in that area for a decade, and had just recently had cause to visit the county courthouse (to donate blood, as it happens). I was quite amazed to find, posted right beside the entrance, a large bronze plaque of the Ten Commandments.
In what was to be the beginning of my freethought activism, I wrote a letter of complaint to the County Commissioners, explaining that a religious placard was utterly inappropriate on the wall of a county courthouse (not to mention illegal, per the First Amendment).
I received a prompt reply, which said that after due consideration, the Commissioners concluded that the plaque "has neither the intent nor the effect of either advancing or inhibiting a particular religion, philosophy, or belief and has a proper secular purpose."
Naturally, I wrote back and told them that after due consideration, I had concluded that they were evidently idiots.
Okay, I didn't say that. I did, however, point out that the first four edicts of the decalogue are blatantly religious, having no secular purpose whatsoever. That's forty percent of the document. Nearly half! And the remaining six, while arguably noble, are rather beside the point. The Commandments, as a "document," cannot sensibly be argued as "secular."
The Commissioners' response? They forwarded my letter to the Assistant County Solicitor, who wrote me a brief note saying that his office agreed with the Commissioners' response to me.
I responded, of course, saying that I disagreed completely and that they weren't done hearing about it. I copied some people on this letter, including Robert Tiernan, a lawyer for the Freedom of Religion Foundation, and Margaret Downey, Director of the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia.
I copied Mr. Tiernan in order to begin the "paper trail" in what I knew would be a long, drawn-out battle. As for Ms. Downey, I'd heard of her through FFRF, but had never met her. After receiving my letter, however, she was quick to contact me.
Margaret and I hit it off immediately. And she was thrilled when I said, "Yes, I'd be happy to be part of a lawsuit against the County." They needed a Chester County resident to be the plaintiff in the suit, one they'd been itching to fight for years. And there I was.
But not for long.
As it happens, I was shortly to be moving unexpectedly to Utah, where I would of course continue my activism, creating the Freethought Society of Northern Utah and being the primary pain-in-the-butt to a certain County Clerk in Ogden.
I look back on my two and a half years in Utah with a bit of pride, I confess. In the overall scheme of things, perhaps my accomplishments there were nothing to get excited about, but they're significant to me.
And yet, all during that time, I felt I'd left some unfinished business in Pennsylvania. Margaret and her group had no idea when next they'd have a Chester County resident with the nerve to be plaintiff in such a touchy suit.
Well, it took a while, but they got one.
The case finally made it to court, along with the ACLU, in fact. And my old friends the Chester County Commissioners… lost.
Oh, I'm sure they'll file an appeal. But their reasoning is so lame, and the judge's decision pointed out just how odd it is to refer to the Commandments as secular in nature.
I have little doubt that the appeal will fail, too.
And that's the beauty of this sort of situation. Such breaches of the Establishment Clause are common, and more often than not, quite flagrant. But few people are willing to stand up to it and (as the expression goes) "make a case out of it."
As a result of the decision of this case, Margaret has received threats by phone and email. The plaintiff in the case received threats, too. Such things are commonplace when it comes to situations like this, so it's not at all surprising that people hesitate to make a stand.
But once they do… once these blatant violations of the Constitution do make it to trial… it almost always ends in favor of the Constitution, as it should.
But the Chester County commissioners fall into the same camp as the infamous Judge Roy Moore in Alabama (he who defiantly posted the Ten Commandments in his courtroom, in spite of orders to the contrary) and the County Clerk in Ogden, Utah (who refused to perform non-religious marriage ceremonies, despite being an elected official expressly forbidden to inject religion into her position). People like this will stop at virtually nothing to impose their personal belief system onto others, and use their government positions to do so, while thinking themselves "persecuted" when told they're not allowed to do so.
These people make me retch. And there will never be any shortage of them. Likely as not, they will always far outnumber those who would stand up against them.
Fortunately, in this particular confrontation, there is no strength in numbers, other than the strength to intimidate. And while that is significant, the real point is that there will always be that tiny minority who will stand up against them, a minority who'll win. And the majority will always wonder why, since they're so much bigger and stronger than those few rabble-rousers who complain about religious intrusion on public life.
You'd think these Christians might just remember a certain story about David and Goliath, wouldn't you?
Might doesn't make right. And I don't care if you're a County Clerk, a County Commissioner, a judge, or the President of the United States. The wall of separation between church and state is not yours to tear down. So quit trying.
