I have good news mixed with bad.
The good news is, if you’re a free-thinking Oklahoman, you will no longer have to wonder what the ten commandments are doing at your capitol.
The bad news is that you will not get to see the Satanic Temple’s Baphomet sculpture next to it. The state supreme court realized that the enshrinement of one religion on public grounds is unconstitutional. I imagine it also realized that every religion could festoon the capitol grounds with religious symbolism, and that is something they would rather avoid because it makes Oklahoma look like the land of the kooks, and they get enough bad press as it is.
I don’t blame them. I think the Baphomet is a completely unacceptable display of “religion”. But so is the Ten. We don’t operate by Mosaic law. Give up on the idea that is is of historic value. So what? So is the code of Hammurabi, and I don’t see people eager to follow its precepts or put up a monument to it.
All props to the Satanic Temple for making this debate possible. Keeping religion out of our government is of paramount concern to all upright men and women. Donate here. They’re causing havoc in a lot of important areas of public debate, because they are in the envious position of being a religion themselves. I have donated, and will happily wear a tee from them, but I can’t say I am a Satanist any more than I can demand to be photographed by the state with a colander on my head. I’m just not a “movement” kind of guy, you know?