Friday, June 18, 1999

House backs Ten Commandments in schools

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BY MARK CURNUTTE
The Cincinnati Enquirer

        In a move that reflects tensions in a pending Adams County case, the U.S. House of Representatives voted Thursday to permit the display of the Ten Commandments in schools.

        By 248-180, House members approved Rep. Robert Aderholt's amendment to allow states to decide whether to permit such displays on government property. The amendment, said Mr. Aderholt, R-Ala., was a first step toward reinstilling the value of human life in children influenced by violent culture.

        All Tristate representatives voted with the majority except Reps. Baron Hill, D-Seymour, Ind., and Ted Strickland, D- Lucasville.

        In February, the Adams County/Ohio Valley school board was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), on behalf of Peebles resident Berry Baker, for allowing the Ten Commandments to be displayed in front of four Adams County high schools.

        Briefs are due in the case in January in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati, and oral arguments are scheduled to begin in March.

        “It is gratifying to see so many nationally elected leaders from across the country that share the sentiment of Adams County residents,” Adams County schools Superintendent Al Porter said Thursday in a written statement.

        Scott Greenwood, an ACLU lawyer in Cincinnati, isn't concerned about the House vote.

        “Cynically, Congress has no real agenda but to react to the public,” he said. “It is a violation of the First Amendment. The president would veto it. Hopefully, cooler heads would prevail in the Senate. Assuming, just for the sake of argument, it was approved by the Senate and signed by the president, it would get struck down by the courts.

        “This will have no effect on the Adams County case.”

        The First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

        News of the House vote reached some Adams County residents Thursday afternoon while they unloaded a shipment of 3,000 pro-Ten Commandments yard signs. The signs — about 10,000 already have been given out — are the second batch ordered by the group calling itself Adams County for The Ten Commandments, which formed shortly after the lawsuit was filed.

        “My first reaction was, "Finally, someone in Washington has realized that the moral decline in our country and school violence are linked,'” said the Rev. Tom Claibourne, a group member and a minister at Bethlehem Church of Christ in Winchester, Adams County. “I think it's very positive. We're very pleased.”

        The Ten Commandments vote came while lawmakers were working on a bill to deter juvenile crime and prompted a sharp rebuke from one religious group.

        “I think this is just one more sad example of religion being used as a political football by a Congress which apparently cannot find any real solution to the problem under debate,” said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

        The Supreme Court in 1980 struck down as unconstitutional a Kentucky law requiring the posting of a copy of the Ten Commandments in each public school classroom. The court said such postings violated the required separation of religion and government.

        Donald Schmidt, superintendent of the Finneytown Local School District in Hamilton County, said the House could focus on other pressing issues if it wanted to help schools.

        “Permitting the Ten Commandments is a Band-Aid,” he said. “If they want to walk the talk, they could do something about the sale of weapons. They could do something about the entertainment industry.”

        The Ten Commandments vote was a victory for conservatives in the debate over whether violent culture, the proliferation of guns or a combination of the two are responsible for recent school shootings and other youth violence.

        Republicans, for the most part, have sided with a cultural solution and taken aim at the entertainment industry, pushing legislation to change the violent and sexual content of movies, video games and music. Democrats, meanwhile, want more laws to keep guns out of the hands of children.

        One lawmaker, Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., said recently that if the Ten Commandments had been posted at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., the April 20 massacre there would not have happened.

        Fred Bassett, superintendent of Beechwood Schools in Kenton County, said morality and values are tricky issues to balance in schools.

        “Whose values do you teach?” he said. “You get into trouble when you post the Ten Commandments and not items out of the Koran or from Buddhist or Native American teachings. We are a pluralistic society and are getting more pluralistic.”

        Mr. Bassett and Mr. Schmidt said there are common civic values taught in public schools — such as respect for one another, respect of differences, the importance of voting or helping the less fortunate.

        “To say that (public) schools are valueless is absurd,” Mr. Schmidt said.

        In Adams County, the monuments were paid for by an Adams County ministers' association and were set at the school entrances when the buildings were dedicated in fall 1997. The four, almost identical schools — in the Adams County towns of Peebles, Seaman, West Union and Manchester — were built at the same time with tax money to replace aging and crowded buildings.

        The gray stones are carved with a flying eagle, an American flag and the Ten Commandments — the list of moral laws that the Bible's Old Testament says were given to Moses by God on Mount Sinai.

        Mr. Baker, interim director of the Center for Phallic Worship, filed a federal lawsuit Feb. 9 asking that the monuments be declared unconstitutional and torn down.

        Enquirer reporter Christine Wolff and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

House makes gun show sales easier

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