The facts are slightly different, but residents of Allegheny County will identify with a dispute in Clearfield County over the posting of the Ten Commandments at the county courthouse. Here, as there, a priggish objection to a minimal "establishment of religion" produced a divisive chain reaction.
In April of last year, after a civil liberties group in Washington, D.C., filed suit to remove an 83-year-old Ten Commandments plaque from the outside of the Allegheny County Courthouse, we suggested that it would have been better if the objectors had let sleeping dogmas lie.
We agreed with county Chief Executive Jim Roddey that the plaque was "part of the historical significance of this building" rather than an exercise in proselytizing for Judaism or Christianity. Leaving such an artifact in place, we said, was different from erecting a fresh religious monument.
The opposing sides in the Allegheny County controversy have been awaiting the outcome of an appeal by Chester County of a federal judge's ruling that its Ten Commandments plaque violated the separation of church and state. Meanwhile, the Ten Commandments controversy has spread to Clearfield County.
A Ten Commandments plaque at that county's courthouse is "only" 30 years old, but otherwise the battle lines are reminiscent of the Allegheny County controversy. Organized atheists and others want the marker removed; the political establishment, with popular support, says no. Litigation may be in the offing.
One difference is that Clearfield County is debating the display of the Ten Commandments after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and in the aftermath of a much-criticized federal court decision in California holding that it is unconstitutional to require schoolchildren to pledge allegiance to one nation "under God." Indeed, at a Clearfield County commissioners meeting at which the Ten Commandments were discussed, some 300 pro-commandment citizens defiantly shouted "under God" during the pledge.
As in Allegheny County, one of the problems with this controversy is that some who defend the placement of the Ten Commandments on government property are not concerned primarily with historical preservation. They revere the commandments' religious message, and if atheists and other malcontents don't like the idea of local government enshrining the theology of the majority, too bad.
The danger in a religiously charged dispute is that people on both sides will go to extremes. The remedy is an Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt keep a sense of proportion. Alas, it's a commandment often honored in the breach.
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