Religion

Steve Beshear on the Ten Commandments and Voluntary School Prayer

 

·         Steve Beshear, as attorney general, issued a sweeping opinion that the federal Constitution prohibits the public display of religious symbols, including the Ten Commandments.^[1]  Beshear’s opinion demanded that local school superintendents immediately remove copies of the Ten Commandments from classrooms.

 

·         Steve Beshear claims that he was merely following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that stipulated the Ten Commandments be removed from schools and other public buildings, but Beshear’s opinion does not merely apply that U.S. Supreme Court ruling^[2], as he would have you believe.  Instead, Beshear’s opinion extends the ruling and enlarges its application to preclude virtually any accommodation of public religious expression.

 

·         In fact, the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause does not require such an absurd and extreme result.  And the Constitution does not preclude the public display of the Ten Commandments. The case Beshear interpreted has a much more narrow application than Beshear suggests. The U.S. Supreme Court, starting with Lemon v. Kurtzman, 405 U.S 602 (1971) and continuing through later cases, including Stone v. Graham, has consistently held that the public display of religious symbols, including the Ten Commandments, can be constitutional—so long as it has a secular legislative purpose. But Beshear’s opinion glosses over this critical analysis, demonstrating an excessive hostility to any public display of religious images.

 

·         Beshear’s opinion should have emphasized that Stone v. Graham does not end the matter and that there are ways to constitutionally display religious symbols.  The opinion’s conspicuous failure to provide such guidance reveals an intolerant and discriminatory attitude toward religion that is not required by the law.

 

·         Steve Beshear made his extreme views clear in 1996, when he told a nonpartisan group he opposed voluntary school prayer. In response a nonpartisan voter information questionnaire. Beshear stated his opposition to a constitutional amendment that would allow public school students to pray voluntarily.^[3]

 

·         Steve Beshear’s unapologetic view of the First Amendment is extreme and out of the mainstream.  Beshear has consistently sought to remove religion entirely from the public square and his views are out of step with the majority of Kentuckians. Speaking about his efforts to remove the Ten Commandments from classrooms, Beshear told the Lexington Herald-Leader in 1999, “I have no regrets for my action.”^[4]