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Separation of church, state is a right
Working people cannot rely on the courts or political maneuvers to protect our rights. The rightists are counting on being able to clog judicial machinery and reverse previous rulings. Freedom of religion and separation of church and state are hard-won gains of the First American Revolution. A broad campaign to defend these rights needs to be organized.
When I was in grade school and through much of junior high school in Pennsylvania, a state law (passed in 1949 as part of the anticommunist witchhunt) required the school day be opened with a reading of 10 verses from the Bible and a recitation of the Lord's Prayer. Teachers could be fired for failing to comply. Students who declined to participate faced harassment.
The purpose these exercises served was to instill blind obedience, conformity, and discipline. The Supreme Court finally outlawed those compulsory religious exercises in 1963 after lawsuits by the Unitarian family of Edward Schempp in Abington, Pennsylvania, and Baltimore atheists Madalyn Murray and her son.
What's wrong with posting the Ten Commandments? Harrisburg dentist Michael Cook, who addressed the board, said the Ten Commandments should be posted to "remind our students there is a standard of moral conduct."
It's not true that the Ten Commandments are just good rules to live by. They are ancient statutes codifying compulsory monotheism. Posting them in public schools a violation of the fundamental right of working people to freely decide their religious views.
The Ten Commandments are a small portion of an elaborate set of ancient laws recorded in the Old Testament. Among other things this body of law spelt out that the penalty for violating strictures on worshipping one almighty God was death by stoning.
Monotheism reflected the emergence of the father-dominated family, private property, and classes.
The state developed as the supreme power through which the ruling class oppressed and extracted tribute from all others. Monotheism provided the ideological heavy artillery of the oppressing classes by hallowing the family patriarch, governing authorities, and priesthood, and the state headed by priests.
The Tenth Commandment is abbreviated in the Harrisburg version as "Thou shall not covet." In its unabridged form it sanctified private property, which was still a new, and difficult to impose, social relation in ancient times. This holy mandate classified women and slaves as chattel, along with oxen and donkeys.
Class-conscious workers defend the democratic right of believers of all faiths to practice their religion free from discrimination. Imposing a religious document on all those attending a public school is the opposite of this right.
In the culture war the rightists seek to roll back women's rights and the rights of all working people and youth—often in the name of defending "Christian values." One student was heard commenting after the meeting, "These are the same people that want to take away abortion rights." This is part of the employers' drive against our wages, heath care, and union rights, and part of the rulers' drive to war.
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