Christian right-wingers trying to impose religion on your kids

There are a few different versions of the 10 Commandments, but there is one that most Americans, be they Christians or not, are familiar. It is the one that tells listeners to have no other gods, honor the sabbath, not use that god's name in vain, or make graven images. While they also tell people not to murder or steal, those moral rules long predate their codification.

After all, there were laws against murder and theft in Japan long before Christianity made itself known in that nation. Now, there is nothing about say, not having slavery, but the bible doesn't seem like a very anti-slavery book. Well, because it is not.

Well, a public high school in Narrows, Virginia had a 10 Commandments display on a wall. This was supposedly to show the foundation of the 10 Commandments on American law. Well, it hasn't. We aren't a Christian theocracy and 4/10 of the Commandments if put into American law, would be directly unconstitutional and violate the free exercise and establishment clauses.

Putting Christian religious dogma on a wall and surrounding it with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution does not make it constitutional and does not stop it from what it is, an effort by the religious rightwing to convert the children of non-believers.

We are a secular republic built upon Enlightenment ideals. No western nation ever founded had less less of a biblical basis than our nation. So, Judge Michael Urbanski in this case has offered a compromise. Put only those six commandments where a god isn't commanding people how to worship a religion, on the wall. You know, the ones that Christian conservatives are always telling us why the commandments should be posted in the first place.

To supposedly teach morality to school children. Judge Urbanski is being called an atheist by the religious right-wing. I wouldn't mind if he was, but those on the far right assume someone must be an atheist if he or she supports keeping government neutral on religion.

Well, if you think this has caused an uproar among the far religious right, you win first prize. Of course it has, because the whole reason for the commandments, like efforts to re-impose organized school prayer, is to convert the children of non-believers. To convert the children of people like me, atheist/humanists. Or, the children of Jews or the children of Hindus or less devout Christians.

Frankly, for all their talk about morality in schools, if the Christian rightwing had to choose between the commandments where their god imposes religious rules and the ones saying do not steal, I would be shocked if they didn't pick the one that imposes religious rules.

Why they think their rights are dependent on the government pushing religion on non-believers and the less devout, I have no idea. They actually believe that. After all, humanists such as I aren't trying to impose Humanist Manifesto displays on school classroom walls, though the Humanist Manifesto has much more to do without our Enlightenment based republic, than the 10 Commandments.