cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/31045336
By Hannah Feuer May 30, 2025
"Rosenthal introduced an amendment that would have required public schools to display the Jewish and Catholic versions of the Ten Commandments, in addition to the Protestant version, which all have slightly different wording. The amendment’s failure to pass, he argued, showed the hypocrisy of the bill’s supporters.
“The fact that they will argue it’s only about values and not about religion, I think it’s a pretty disingenuous talking point,” he said. “The whole thrust of this, I think, is to get a case in front of a newly formed Supreme Court.” The U.S. Supreme Court has had a 6-3 conservative majority since 2020."
They’re not mad about the forced religious indoctrination…
They’re mad that their religion doesn’t get included
Could be that is the case, or it could be that they intentionally proposed the amendment knowing it wouldn’t pass in order to prove that the proposed law was attempting to establish a single state religious preference.
I don’t know their motives, but it sounds like the sort of thing the Satanic Temple would do, albeit using actual, mainstream religions instead.
They’re using this language to set a precedent for future court fights over 1st Amendment violation of Established Religion.
It effectively establishes the legislature had the opportunity to be inclusive, but choose to strictly defined these laws as conforming to a single, selective orthodoxy. They’re legislating a State Religion, which is illegal under the Constitution.
Whether the courts give a shit? Probably not. But this is how you lay the foundation for a judicial challenge on constitutional grounds.
If one religions message is shown, all other religions message need to be shown.
While I agree with you, legally speaking the state is prohibited from establishing a religion, not from having religious symbols in general.
Traditionally many have opted to entirely separate them, but this has led some to claim that an antipathy for religion is also a lack of the required indifference to religion.
In my opinion this is well over the line, since a permanent display installed by the school is different from a student initiated activity or cultural event with religious context.
Given that line of argument though, it’s much easier to overturn these types of laws by showing that they have preferences, rather than it being too much.
The satanic temples whole thing is basically saying that if you want the ten commandments, you need to display our commandments too. Right up there with arguing abortion is a religious sacrament.
It’s a setup for a lawsuit, not a serious demand.
Yes if the state is going to mandate they get punched in the nuts as some sort of religious aspects the other religions get their own nut smashing things too… It’s all our non. Using t his tactic has stopped many religious bills
Enemy of my enemy is my friend or something?
No
Because there should be zero religious indoctrination in schools, and this person is arguing there isn’t enough
Regardless which one of these two “wins” it’s still not solving any problems. Which I really thought was obvious enough it didn’t need explicitly said, yet here we are.
This person is arguing that the state legislature is so inflexible in its definition of “The Ten Commandments” that they won’t even accept the widely circulated variants employed by two of the world’s largest religions. This is laying the foundation for a Constitutional argument against the law by demonstrating that the legislature is attempting to codify a State Religion.
The point isn’t to “win” the legislative fight. Dems are in the minority, so anything Rosenthal puts up is doomed to fail anyway.
The point is to clearly establish the intent of the legislature for the benefits of a future court challenge. In this case, Rosenthal is clarifying that the Texas legislature is not merely interested in displaying some religious swag, but in having the state of Texas statutorily defining what the Ten Commandments are.
That’s a clear violation of the rights of any Texas resident who adheres to an alternative interpretation.