by The Red River Freethinkers
Good evening, I am Wesley Twombly, Chair of the Red River Freethinkers. We are requesting that the Ten Commandments monolith be moved off public property, as it is a religious monument and therefore a breach of the establishment clause of the Constitution. We feel that the removal of the monument from city property is the correct legal, moral, and ethical decision.
One of the concerns of the HRC deals with diversity in the city. I feel that the monument impacts diversity poorly. At a bare minimum the monument implies that Christianity is the favored religion of the city. Imagine for a moment you are a non-Christian contractor putting in a bid on a city job, and you do not get the contract. Would you be certain that your religious views had nothing to do with the decision, or would you be concerned as the city seems to promote Christianity above other religions, and that it might have something to do with the decision?
Let's not forget the potential abuses that can occur when religion becomes entangled with government. To quote from John Madison in "Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments" (20 June 1785): "Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? That the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?"
I would like to think there are any number of Christians in the audience and in the city that understand this concept very well and support the requirement that the government be neutral with respect to religion.
Madison made this comment (and others) about a bill in Virginia: "A Bill establishing a provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion." Obviously what Madison was commenting on was not the same situation we have with the monument on the City's property, I think the similarities are striking. The Virginia bill also claimed to only be promoting Christianity in general.
To give you some of the background from the legal system: As I am sure you are aware, on May 29, 2001, the Supreme Court of the United States declined to review the case of the City of Elkhart v. William A. Books et al. Justice Stevens, a justice on the majority view of the case, wrote a Statement about the case. To quote Justice Stevens: "Even though the first two lines of the monument's text appear in significantly larger font than the remainder, they are ignored by the dissenters. Those lines read: 'THE TEN COMMANDMENTS- I AM the LORD thy GOD." The graphic emphasis placed on those first lines is rather hard to square with the proposition that the monument expresses no particular religious preference.." Justice Stevens appears to have made this comment only because the dissenting Justices neglected this fact in their Statement. Justice Stevens also comments on the fact that three of the speakers were religious leaders, who spoke of the need to adopt the commandments, not their secular purpose.
There is significant similarity between the Elkhart monument and the monument here in Fargo, right down to who was present at the dedication. Of the five named present on the platform in the photo in the June 4, 1961 Forum, one was a Catholic priest and one was a rabbi. While I could not find information on the dedication speech given to Fargo, I also found a story on the dedication of the Moorhead Ten Commandments monolith (Oct 31, 1960). To quote the Forum article: "an interdenominational version of the Ten Commandments, agreed upon by Eagles officials after deliberations with many religious leaders, is inscribed on the monument." Judge Ruegemer is quoted as saying: "If all men abided by these 10 laws of God, there would be little need for the millions of man-made laws we have today."
You will notice that no pretense was made that the inscription was non-religious, merely interdenominational, and Judge Ruegemer does not appear to be making ANY pretense that the monument is serving a secular purpose, but is a reminder of the laws of the god of a particular religion.
While the Elkhart case is not the only significant Ten Commandments case that has gone through the courts, it is a very recent one, and very similar to the monument here in Fargo. The Red River Freethinkers are requesting that this religious monument be removed from city property and placed somewhere more appropriate. Thank you for your time and consideration of this issue.