ICC Note: Earlier this month, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) issued a letter of complaint regarding a Ten Commandments monument located in a public park in Santa Fe. As the display is on public grounds, the FFRF asserted that it is unconstitutional because it suggests government preference for Christianity over other religions. Although noting that they have not previously received any complaints over the monument, city officials have not yet responded to the letter.
By Heather Clark
01/17/2018 United States (Christian News Network) – One of the nation’s most conspicuous atheist activist groups has contacted the city attorney for Santa Fe, New Mexico to assert that a Ten Commandments monument displayed in a public park adjacent to a fire station is unconstitutional and should be moved to private property.
The Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) says that the six-foot monument that rests in Ashbaugh Park in front of Fire Station No. 3 should be given back to the Fraternal Order of Eagles or transferred to the grounds of a church.
“The First Commandment alone makes it obvious why the Ten Commandments may not be posted on government property. The government has no business telling citizens which God they must have, how many gods they must have, or that they must have any God at all,” wrote Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor in the letter, dated Jan. 8.
“One the government confers endorsement and preference for some religions over others, it strikes a blow at religious liberty, forcing taxpayers of all faith and of no religion to support a particular expression of worship,” she said.
Gaylor also claimed that the 10th Commandment, which teaches men not to covet their “neighbor’s house [nor his] neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s” offensively implies that wives and servants are a man’s “property” and “on par with cattle.”
