The GOP wants to impose on us far more than just the Ten Commandments!

Religious fascism on the rise!

Republican Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry signed legislation on Wednesday mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in every classroom in the state that receives public funding, meaning from kindergarten through the university level. Landry made it clear that the purpose of the new law is establishing the religious views of the GOP as American law, as he declared, “If you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original law giver, which was Moses,” adding, “He got his commandments from God.”

Some of you might be thinking: Didn’t the US Supreme Court rule that it would be unconstitutional for a state to mandate the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools?! Well, you are correct. In 1980, the US Supreme Court in the case of Stone v. Graham considered whether a Kentucky law requiring the posting of a copy of the Ten Commandments on the wall of each public school classroom (that was actually paid for by private donations) violated the “Establishment clause” of the First Amendment. That all important clause provides that the government “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

In a 5 to 4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in Stone that “requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school rooms has no secular legislative purpose, and is therefore unconstitutional.” But that was 1980 with a Supreme Court that opposed the government officially favoring one religion over others.

In fact, the key Supreme Court decision that the justices relied on when ruling in 1980 that the posting of the Ten Commandments in a public school was unconstitutional was the famous case of Lemon v. Kurtzman. In that unanimous 1971 decision, the court laid out a three prong test—later known as “The Lemon Test”— to prevent the government from “establishing” any one faith.

But the Lemon case was overturned in 2022 by today’s GOP’s Supreme Court in a 6 to 3 decision involving a public school football coach who was fired for conducting a Christian prayer on school grounds in the middle of the school’s football field. Past Supreme Courts would have ruled that was unconstitutional based on the rationale that “the Establishment Clause proscribes public schools from ‘conveying or attempting to convey a message that religion or a particular religious belief is favored or preferred or otherwise endorsing religious beliefs.” But not the current one! They ruled the coach could hold a Christian prayer service on the field of a public school despite some players on the team feeling coerced to attend.

Now you get why Gov. Landry excitedly declared about this new Ten Commandant’s law, “I can’t wait to be sued.” Landry, like all Republicans who have long dreamed of turning the United States into the right-wing Christian version of Saudi Arabia, get that the current grotesquely corrupt GOP Supreme court will deliver their religious dreams. They saw that with the football coach case in 2022 and in another 6 to 3 GOP justice decision in 2022 that for first time ever mandated that the state must pay for people going to religious school as part of a school voucher program, thus, “tearing down one of the foundational rules separating church from state.” Writing in a dissent joined by Justice Elena Kagan and in part by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Stephen Breyer said about this school voucher case, the court had “never previously held what the Court holds today, namely, that a State must (not may) use state funds to pay for religious education as part of a tuition program designed to ensure the provision of free statewide public-school education.”

And of course the same GOP Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, not for legal reasons but because the right wing justices are religiously opposed to abortion. They knew that ending the 50-year constitutional right to reproductive freedom would lead to Republican states imposing their religious beliefs as law and thereby banning abortion.  Since that ruling, 14 GOP controlled states have enacted a total abortion ban forcing women to a carry a fetus to term against their will. Many of these states even barbarically force a woman who is raped to carry the rapist’s fetus to term.  These abortion bans are not only forcing women to beg for an abortion to save their lives when there is a medical issue, but are literally killing women—as studies now back up.

This is why the Louisiana GOP is now taking aim at a 1980 Supreme Court decision that barred the Ten Commandments being posted in public schools. They fully grasp that this extreme Supreme Court will overturn long established precedent to deliver on the promise of turning the US into a right-wing Bible theme park. It’s also why we should all be concerned with the GOP Senators a few weeks ago blocking legislation that would’ve enshrined a federal right to access contraception and just last week blocking a measure that would guarantee access to in vitro fertilization nationwide.

The GOP is never hiding their agenda, it’s that too many ignore what they are trying to achieve as being unachievable—like overturning Roe. And now the same groups, like Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America who worked for decades to end the right to abortion, are seeking to end access to certain forms of birth control that they see as inconsistent with their religious beliefs.

These religious fundamentalists believe--as leading Republicans have openly declared in the past: “Our civil laws have to comport with a higher law: God’s law.”  Current Speaker Mike Johnson is cut from that very cloth and is proud of his efforts “to erode the separation of church and state and abortion and LGBTQ rights” as a lawyer for the right wing Alliance Defense Fund and then as an elected official.

If you think religious extremists will change their deeply held beliefs it means you have never met one. The reality is they never change their views, only their tactics. And it’s clear the goal of today’s GOP includes far more than just requiring the Ten Commandments in classrooms.  They are seeking to impose a right-wing theocracy where their extreme religious beliefs are the law of the land. They are not hiding that agenda. The only question is whether enough people are paying attention?!

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