The Ten Commandments

Posted on October 1, 2003 in Liberals & Progressives Morals & Ethics

Doug the Mute Troubadour weighed in on the Ten Commandments issue. Like him, I’ve kept my silence on this one, preferring to let others argue the point ad nauseum if they wish. Doug’s unique position for a liberal and a self-professed ally of the ACLU deserves comment, however:

I personally support very little of the Religious Right’s political and social agenda. But here I am, affirming displays of the Ten Commandments on public school property, courtrooms, and other “secular” public places….

[I believe in] the right of a local community to choose the standards it wishes to live by, whether secular or non-secular, so long as those standards do not hurt the welfare of its citizenry. I just don’t see how publicly posting the Ten Commandments is harmful to anyone. Displaying the Eightfold Path to Enlightenment would also be desirable, if the majority in a community agreed to it.

Doug’s inadvertently hit on the very reason why I feel it is dangerous to start dumping tablets of stone in the free speech commons: who gets to say what goes there? It is bad enough that we’re divided in this country between Left and Right, that we’re not thinking in terms of issues rather than partisan alignments. Do we need to accentuate our religious differences, too?

I believe in a secular government. Which means that the Government has no opinion on which religion is the best. If the park were opened to all religions, we get a tragedy of the commons: namely, that everyone will want to post her or his religious creed there, including the Church of Satan. If we decide what goes there by means of majority rule, then we tumble into tyranny.

Say a group of Catholics wants to put up a statue of John Paul II in a largely Baptist community in North Carolina. Say the Baptist minister decries this action and persuades his congregation to vote against allowing the statue. What you get is religious oppression, the feeling of being labeled as outsiders or worse, a danger to the community. I feel that by allowing the government to take sides you effectively undermine the social contract upon which the United States is based, which is toleration. You also undermine the spirituality of a community by introducing a state-supported element of divisiveness, of faith against faith.

Government is about helping people to live together in peace regardless of their religious persuasion or political views. There can be no freedom of conscience where one religion is allowed to dominate the field. It is better to keep the matter open for individual decision so that a free ongoing discussion may continue to occur.

What doug proposes is, in effect, shutting the doors of participation to people because of religious beliefs that do not mesh with the majority. It is unhealthy for any free society or any free religion to allow healthy and vigorous debate to be shut down by the whims of a majority — no matter how slender or how broad. It kills the community and kills the soul.

In good faith and friendship, I strongly disagree with doug’s stand. I must side with those who support absolute freedom of conscience and absolute neutrality of the government in these matters.

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Doug’s always had a screwy system of organization, but look for the article entitled “The Ten Commandments” on either the main page or in the September archive.