Keeping the Commandments
By Staff
August 10, 2003
Over in Alabama, Chief Justice Roy Moore is telling supporters he would be guilty of treason if he didn't fight to keep a Ten Commandments monument in the rotunda of the state judicial building. Moore says his crusade is about the acknowledgment of God, not about bolstering his own political career.
A rally in Montgomery was organized after U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ordered Moore to remove the 5,300-pound monument from the judicial building by Wednesday. Earlier, both Thompson and a three judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals had found that the monument was an unconstitutional endorsement of religion by government.
Moore and his attorneys in a petition Friday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to nullify Thompson's order.
The petition asks the Supreme Court to order Thompson to show cause why he should not vacate and expunge from the record'' his ruling unlawfully ordering'' Moore to move the monument.
This is taking on the specter of a political circus; observers said as many as 10,000 people attended the rally. One speaker, the Rev. Jerry Falwell said, "Civil disobedience is the right of all men when we believe breaking man's law is needed to preserve God's law."
That is an interesting thought, but will it hold up in court?
