Public school classrooms in the modern day can’t function as one size fits all, says Joseph Backholm, the Family Research Council’s senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement.
Backholm, an attorney, says those who say the Ten Commandments in a public school classrooms is a violation of the Establishment Clause, overlook the fact LGBTQ ideology has become a religion unto itself.
“The Ten Commandments have religious origins for sure," Backholm told Washington Watch host Jody Hice. "They also have historical significance to the United States and to the Judeo-Christian perspective, which is the foundation of Western Civilization. That’s just a historical reality.”
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, last week signed a bill requiring all public classrooms in the state to display the Ten Commandments.
It’s not only about Ten Commandments
The law authorizes but does not require the display of other historical documents such as the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence and the Northwest Ordinance.
The law does not specify the size or format of the display but it does require the display include text explaining the historical significance of the Ten Commandments in public education in the U.S.
The ACLU announced it would move swiftly with plans for a lawsuit.
“The law violates the separation of church and state and is blatantly unconstitutional,” read a joint statement by the ACLU, its Louisiana chapter, American United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation.
Whoopi Goldberg led the assault against the new law on “The View.”
“I’m not asking you to believe what I believe. I’m not asking your kids to believe what I believe. Public school is public school. It means everybody can go to public school. I don’t understand why if you want your child to have a religious education send them to a religious school. There’s nothing stopping you. Get out of my pocket. Get out of my body, and get out of my school,” Goldberg said.
“America’s classrooms have never been neutral ground, but as we become increasingly pluralistic in terms of our religious secularism, and a growing number of people who follow religious like Islam, it’s makes it clear how difficult it is to have a one size fits all education system that pretends to serve everyone,” Backholm said. “What we have to do is stop trying as a practical matter.”
Backholm said Goldberg’s hot take ignores the Biden administration’s unbending support of the LGBTQ community. That support shows up in any number of policy decisions but especially education.
At least 15 states have filed lawsuits against the administration for its rewrite of Title IX, the landmark legislation that advanced women’s rights in 1972.
The administration is unlikely to define it as such, but Backholm says the Pride movement has itself become a religion and Pride month “is the longest religious holiday in the West these days,” he said.
Goldberg is trying to convince the show’s viewers that “if the 10 Commandments are not in government schools we are somehow dealing with a neutral space where no values are being encouraged, and that is simply not the case, and Pride Month is perhaps the best illustration of that,” Backholm said.
Lawsuits were expected, conservative leader says
Gene Mills, president of Louisiana Family Forum, tells AFN his organization is delighted by the law. "We think it's proper to restore the Ten Commandments – also known as the Decalogue – into its proper place in American jurisprudence, American history, and the public education system," he says.
According to Mills, lawsuits were expected.
"The ACLU has lost its way," says the Forum's spokesman. "In the past couple of decades, it's moved from its original foundational objective, which was to allow free speech. [But] now they've attempted, through decades of court cases, to try to stifle or censor speech that they don't agree with – and people who carry that speech."
Mills points out there is no public expense for the Ten Commandments, and there is no imposition of an established religion. "There is a lot of misunderstanding that's going on across the country," he adds. "The media has literally gone out of its mind in dealing with this."
Values to 'unite' us
Even secularists should agree that lying, killing, stealing and cheating on spouses aren’t good things, Backholm said.
“Those are values we should be able to unite around, and that’s what the Ten Commandments exist to do,” he said.
That historical reality is what separates the Ten Commandments from documents of other faiths should follows of Islam demand passages from the Quran be displayed in classrooms.
“The Quran has no historical significance to the state of Louisiana nor the United States, and our laws are not based on the Quran, and Lord willing they never will be. Those are places that we don’t want to live,” Backholm said.
