OPINION:
Holy Moses. Louisiana is about to become the first state to require posting the Ten Commandments in its schools. Understandably, opposition has swiftly mobilized.
The measure, which has passed both houses of the state Legislature, requires schools to prominently display the Decalogue on a poster no smaller than 11 inches by 14 inches.
The American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the Southern Policy Law Center are frantic.
“Our public schools are not Sunday schools,” they squawked in a joint statement, as if the sight of the Ten Commandments will somehow cause innocent children to grow up to be rabbis or nuns.
The Ten Commandments and the worldview they represent are woven into the fabric of our republic. The Declaration of Independence acknowledges that rights come from the Creator.
John Adams said: “Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
No offense, but by religious people, he did not mean Hindus and Buddhists.
President Harry S. Truman declared, “The fundamental basis for this nation’s laws was given to Moses on the Mount.” Also, without an understanding of this, “we will finally end up with a totalitarian government.”
You’d have to go to Washington blindfolded not to encounter evidence of our religious heritage. On the walls of the House chamber, there are images of 23 great lawgivers. All are in profile except Moses, who is honored with a full-face view that faces the speaker’s platform.
There’s a bronze plaque of the Ten Commandments in the National Archives Building and a statue of Moses in the main reading room of the Library of Congress.
How did we go from “In God We Trust” to God is a threat to democracy?
Ten Commandments posters challenge public education’s revealed religion, as handed down by Karl Marx, Margaret Sanger and Nikole Hannah-Jones of the 1619 Project.
America’s public schools are saturated with gender ideology, diversity, equity and inclusion indoctrination, critical race theory and training in degeneracy. Elon Musk’s son went from being a relatively normal teen to a transgender Marxist, thanks to classroom indoctrination.
Boys are allowed to use girls’ bathrooms and play on their sports teams. Instances of sexual assault are swept under the carpet.
There are grade schools that use the popular “Genderbread Person,” which helps students understand that they can “identify with a gender” other than the one “assigned to them” at birth.
The website of an elementary school in Bellevue, Washington, promises parents that their children “will have explicit conversations about race, equity and access,” and “will identify culture and begin to recognize and identify white culture,” in all of its depravity and wickedness.
In Lexington, Massachusetts. fourth graders are taught to “articulate what gender identity is and why it’s important to use nonbinary language in describing people we don’t know yet.” Mind your pronouns!
This week, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against an eighth grader in Middleborough, Massachusetts, whose school wouldn’t let him wear a T-shirt with the slogan “There are only two genders.” Public education’s established religion doesn’t like competition.
Half of America’s high school students and almost 40% of middle schoolers are subjected to “comprehensive sexuality education,” which is graphic to the point of being pornographic and promotes high-risk sexual behavior and unrestricted access to abortion.
Students are subjected to all of this, but the ACLU and its allies would have us believe that seeing the words of God on a small poster will irreparably damage tender psyches.
Morgan Foster (not her real name) taught English in Cook County, Illinois, schools for over 10 years.
In an interview with The Daily Signal, Ms. Foster charged that “public schools have become indoctrination centers.” The Black teacher said that administrators were removing the works of Shakespeare, Dickens and Hemingway because they regarded them as promoting White privilege and supporting the patriarchy.
You can see the problems Ten Commandments posters would create in this bizarre environment. Mosaic law does not endorse the LGBTQ agenda or excuse discrimination based on past injustice.
Reminding students that there is something higher than the academic fads of the day is dangerous. Those “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots” threaten the orthodoxy of government schools.
The religion of public education is helping to turn America into a jungle of homelessness, addiction and crime.
We need the Ten Commandments more now than ever. The carnage in our streets does not come from teaching divine law.
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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