Thoughts in a Haystack

Please allow me to introduce myself

I'm a man of wealth and taste

I've been around for a long, long year

Stole many a man's soul and faith

And I was 'round when Jesus Christ

Had his moment of doubt and pain

Made damn sure that Pilate

Washed his hands and sealed his fate

Pleased to meet you

Hope you guess my name!

Baphomet may be a busy fellow for a while.

As you may remember, Oklahoma got itself in quite a pickle recently over a Ten Commandments “monument” it erected on the grounds of the state capitol. The state was set to claim that the Ten Commandments monument was only “historical” in nature and that it was part of a “limited public forum” that all comers could contribute to. The Satanic Temple asked to erect its own “monument” to the forum … a statue of Baphomet, commonly associated with Satan, that you see above. In addition, a Hindu group proposed a statue of Lord Hanuman, a heroic Hindu figure.

Recognizing the morass it was wading into, the Capitol Preservation Commission, which decides on monuments on the capitol grounds, called a moratorium on all proposals for monuments on the capitol grounds pending the outcome of an ACLU lawsuit. Recently, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled in that case that, under the state constitution, the monument is not permissible because of a provision that reads:

No public money or property shall ever be appropriated, applied, donated, or used, directly or indirectly, for the use, benefit, or support of any sect, church, denomination, or system of religion, or for the use, benefit, or support of any priest, preacher, minister, or other religious teacher or dignitary, or sectarian institution as such.

Now, many people, after that, would accept that the whole idea was a waste of time. But the theocrats in Oklahoma are made of sterner stuff. Gov. Marry Fallin has refused to remove the monument pending “appeals” (actually, a motion to the state supreme court to reconsider its decision) and attempts by the state legislature to amend the constitution to remove the offending provision.

Not that they are thinking logically but imagine the effect on any Federal lawsuit of the state supreme court finding that “the monument at issue operates for the use, benefit or support of a sect or system of religion” and the legislature then repealing the constitutional provision the state supreme court relied on! They might as well hang a sign on the monument “Dedicated to the Christians of Oklahoma!”

But now Arkansas has joined the fray and its excuse is actually funny:

The Ten Commandments represent a philosophy of government held by many of the founders of this nation and by many Arkansans and other Americans today, that God has ordained civil government and has delegated limited authority to civil government, that God has limited the authority of civil government, and that God has endowed people with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;

The lie is exposed by the very First Commandment (depending how you are counting) “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” The First Amendment makes clear that no one god can can claim government priority, which is, nonetheless, exactly what the Arkansas legislature wants.

These attempts will eventually fail because they aren't like Van Orden v. Perry, where a monument was donated by an outside and widely respected civic group, the monument had stood for some 40 years without complaint and it was one of 17 monuments and 21 historical markers commemorating the "people, ideals, and events that compose Texan identity.

Instead, they are like McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union of Ky., decided on the same day as Van Orden, where Justice Breyer, the swing vote in the two results, noted:

[Van Orden] also differs from McCreary County, where the short (and stormy) history of the courthouse Commandments' displays demonstrates the substantially religious objectives of those who mounted them, and the effect of this readily apparent objective upon those who view them. That history there indicates a governmental effort substantially to promote religion, not simply an effort primarily to reflect, historically, the secular impact of a religiously inspired document. And, in today's world, in a Nation of so many different religious and comparable nonreligious fundamental beliefs, a more contemporary state effort to focus attention upon a religious text is certainly likely to prove divisive in a way that this longstanding, pre-existing monument has not.

Both states will twist themselves into knots trying to come up with secular reasons to refuse the Baphomet and Hanuman monuments and, in the process, will reveal their theocratic intent.

Christians are merely pissing on the capitol grounds to mark their territory and it smells no sweeter than when dogs do it.