June 20, 2024 11:31 AM UTC

Colorado Republicans Love Them Some Ten Commandments

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Washington Post’s Anumita Kaur reports, the state of Louisiana has struck another culture-war blow against the separation of church and state, with a new law requiring the Biblical Ten Commandments to be posted in every public school classroom:

Gov. Jeff Landry (R) signed legislation Wednesday requiring every public classroom in Louisiana to display the Ten Commandments, becoming the first state with such a law and inflaming tensions over the separation between church and state.

“This bill mandates the display of the Ten Commandments in every classroom — public elementary, secondary and post-education schools — in the state of Louisiana, because if you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses,” Landry said at a bill-signing ceremony.

Critics vowed to challenge the law in court, calling it unconstitutional and warning that it will lead to religious coercion of students…

A law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom, not just a monument outside a courthouse, certainly sounds like an unconstitutional “establishment of religion” proscribed by the First Amendment, and before the advent of the 6-3 Trump Supreme Court majority there’s little question as to what would have been this law’s fate. In today’s post-Roe reality where no assumption of binding judicial precedent appears safe, what would have been clearly unconstitutional just a decade ago must now be seriously considered.

Although the public display of the Ten Commandments hasn’t debated as much in recent years in Colorado owing mostly to overwhelming Democratic control of the legislature and executive branch, much like Colorado GOP chairman Dave “Let’s Go Brandon” Williams’ attention-seeking malice against LGBTQ+ people, there’s more support for pushing religion in Colorado public schools than polite Republicans care to admit. A Ten Commandments Monument outside the Colorado Capitol survived challenges all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1990s. In 2011, our friend and media critic Jason Salzman reported on the widespread Republican support for publicly displaying the Ten Commandments with taxpayer dollars, non-Shabbat honorers and non-Judeo-Christian idolaters be damned:

During the 2010 primary U.S. Sen. candidate Ken Buck, U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, State Sen. Ken Lambert (SD 9), State Sen. Kevin Grantham (SD 2), Rep. Mark Barker (HD 17), Rep. Jon Becker (HD 63), Rep. Ray Scott (HD 54), and Rep. Libby Szabo (HD 27) apparently filled out a survey from the Christian Family Alliance indicating that they support “public posting of 10 Commandments.”

The ACLU has already announced their intention to sue to prevent the law from taking effect, setting up the court challenge that was the whole purpose of Gov. Jeff Landry signing the bill. For Colorado conservatives, it’s a case of wishing they had the power to “push the envelope” in the culture wars. And for a majority of Colorado voters, it’s another opportunity to feel fortunate they do not.