Louisiana is already starting down the evangelical path that one could imagine would happen with Governor Jeff Landry and the Republican state legislature with the recent passing of a bill that dictates that schools that receive school funding must present the Ten Commandments. For those that are unaware with Judeo-Christian values, the Ten Commandments are a type of early constitution that governed the moral behavior of the Israelites in the Old Testament. While I am not personally opposed to the Ten Commandments having been exposed to them my entire life, there is a staunch difference between my outlook as a generic American with a base level religious experience and those who come from different religious backgrounds and experience. There is also the right of those who don’t want to engage in religion at all to be free from having to partake in religious expression. Let me explain.
To briefly explain what the Ten Commandments are, most of them are fairly innocuous moral codes that the vast majority of people can agree upon such as “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt not kill”. Where the differences in opinion may start to differ based on a student’s experience are the more subjective beliefs such as “honoring thy mother and father” when said parents might be absent or abusive or avoiding coveting the items of others when the basis of capitalism is using healthy jealously to work towards getting what other people have. People may have different gods or no god that they pay homage to and thus having a specific day, namely the Sabbath, that they are beholden to worship is disingenuous to the people who aren’t of a traditionally Judeo-Christian faith. This is especially important as the United States’ immigrant population increases by about one million people per year and the effect of that growth is that the ideological diversity of the country expands in addition to ethnic and racial diversity.
The law in the United States has usually maintained that private schools can have Ten Commandments (or other scriptures) published on campus because they aren’t paid for with taxpayer funds, but public schools have been off-limits because of the need of non-religious parties to not be coerced into the faith of the majority. The main offending parties of this policy have usually been Christian denominations complaining that the neutrality infringes on their right to free speech when in actuality the law states that any prayer or protest must be student led. There are serious ethical concerns about public school teachers leading religious displays because of the pressure that irreligious students would feel in either conforming or feeling that they would fail classes because of biased instruction. During an age where conservatives are lambasting liberal educators on the issue of bias in education, it’s unclear why they are opening this can of worms for possible exploration, but I digress.
The Ten Commandments isn’t the worst display that the state legislature could’ve chosen, and this is likely by design as they are probably trying to test the waters of how much religious iconography can they foist into a classroom before rubbing against the Supreme Court’s nerves. The issue for Louisianans is that this is the least pressing issue for the state heading into the 2020s compared to several other mounting problems. Between a failed face recognition software program costing the city of New Orleans funds and personal privacy, the state losing population year after year, high crime rates, and a floundering economy, the state’s woes go beyond the educational system which could care less about the display of the Ten Commandments. However, this is the type of fluff issue that Jeff Landry is trying to present to possible voters during his honeymoon phase as Governor to say that he’s done something, knowing fully well the potential illegality of the law, because he wants to keep the positive reputation heading into the next few years of governance should he seek re-election in 2027.
Sources: Ten Commandments – Wikipedia
The Conservatarian Millennial 