Arizona's Senate Appropriations Committee narrowly voted to pass a bill on to the full Senate that requires the posting of a Ten Commandments monument at the state's old Capitol building. Some of the reasoning of the bill's proponents is a bit, well, troubling.
Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, who crafted the measure, said it's wrong to think of the Ten Commandments as religious. Instead, he called them "10 little rules," saying that if everyone honored them, "boy, what a better place this would be."
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"Tolerance works two ways," [added] Sen. Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake. "People need to be tolerant of the majority's beliefs as well as the majority needs to be tolerant of the minority's beliefs."I don't know why it would be that offensive," she continued. Allen said anyone who doesn't believe in what the Ten Commandments say is free to ignore the words, even if they are posted next to a government building.
So, to sum up: Despite their being spoken directly by God on a mountaintop, an event chronicled in religious text which remains central to Jewish and Christian Scripture, and beginning with the (pretty much God-related) admonition that you should "have no other gods before me", Senator Pearce believes it would be "wrong" to think of them as religious. Sorry religious folks – you were just mistaken.
In addition, while everyone's religious beliefs must be "tolerated", the majority's beliefs must be tolerated while etched in granite, sanctioned by the public's elected representatives and presented in front of government buildings. To the victors go the spoils, and all of that. (We would just put them in front of churches, but you know thinking of them as religious would be "wrong.")
And if you don't like it? If you worship in another tradition, or choose not to believe, or hold the mistaken view that the Ten Commandments are religious and shouldn't be paraded as secular? Don't worry, Senator Allen has a tolerant solution for you: get over it!
Got all that?
