In a way you have to feel sorry for them — for William A. Books and Michael Suetkamp, that is. They are residents of Elkhart, Ind., poor fellows, and they suffer horribly whenever they go downtown. They can't escape an awful monument.
Their anguish has motivated a case now pending before the Supreme Court on a petition for review. Once again, the high court is asked to explore the murky depths of the First Amendment and to explain again what is meant by a law "respecting an establishment of religion."
The story dates from May 1958, when the Fraternal Order of Eagles made a gift to the city of Elkhart. The gift was in the form of a granite slab, 6 feet high and a yard wide, bearing the Ten Commandments along with symbols of Christianity and Judaism. With an appropriate ceremony the city erected the memorial on the front lawn of the Municipal Building.
Forty years passed. The monument evoked no riots, no demonstrations, no breaches of the peace. It just stood there. Then came the Indiana Civil Liberties Union. In 1998 it threatened to sue the city if the granite slab was not removed. The City Council stood pat. It adopted a resolution defending the Eagles' gift as "a historical and cultural monument that reflects one of the earliest codes of human conduct."
The Civil Liberties Union thereupon recruited a couple of willing plaintiffs. William Books, an Elkhart resident, testified that whenever he goes to the Municipal Building he comes into contact with the monument. "Even if I don't see it," he said, "I certainly know it is there. It offends me if I think about it."
Plaintiff Michael Suetkamp testified to the same effect. The monument deeply offends him. In his routine activities he frequently passes by the Municipal Building. He does not always look at the monument, but "even if I don't see it, I certainly know it is there."
Let us pause to wonder how the gentlemen can stand to look at the motto on a dollar bill.
The case went to trial on cross-motions for summary judgment. The city won in U.S. District Court, but a three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit voted 2-1 to reverse. Now the case is pending in the Supreme Court on Elkhart's appeal.
The Circuit Court ruled that display of the Ten Commandments serves no secular purpose. On the contrary, the monument "has the primary or principal effect of advancing religion," and thus is constitutionally forbidden. The court implied that if the monument were moved to another location, far away from the Municipal Building, it might pass muster; but at the very seat of local government the monument conveys a clear message that the city officially endorses Judeo-Christian beliefs.
Judge Daniel A. Manion dissented. The monument, in his view, is not so much an endorsement of religion as a formal acknowledgment of our religious roots. The Constitution does not demand that every vestige of religion be removed from our public life. At about the same time that Elkhart was accepting the Eagles' gift, Judge Manion observed, Congress created a prayer room in the national Capitol, added "one nation under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance, and decreed that our currency declare that "In God We Trust." As for the Ten Commandments, the Supreme Court itself sits beneath a frieze depicting Moses and the famous tablet. The guards tell me no one has swooned at the horrid sight.
The question presented in the Elkhart case is not a novel one. In 1973, in a case from Utah, the 10th Circuit considered a virtually identical monument and found no constitutional impediment. In 1995, in a case from Colorado, the state supreme court also upheld a lapidary display of the Ten Commandments. In each instance the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal.
No end to such cases is in sight. On March 16 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit upheld Ohio's display of its motto, "With God All Things Are Possible." The American Civil Liberties Union is the key plaintiff in that case, too.
I must be missing something. The recitation of daily prayers in a public elementary school clearly violates the Establishment Clause. A silent slab of granite, engraved with a message for the ages, strikes me as something else entirely. Tolerance, my brothers, tolerance! It is a virtue not to be disdained.
Universal Press Syndicate