"Texas statehouse have taken the first steps toward passing three bills that inject religion into public schools. One requires public schools to display “in a conspicuous place” the Ten Commandments in every classroom. Another measure will allow schools to require prayer and Bible reading time each school day for students and employees who give their consent to participate.

A third bill would ensure school employees the right to “engage in religious speech or prayer while on duty.”

It’s not the first effort by Texas Republicans to inject religion into public schools. In 2021, the state passed a law requiring schools to display donated “In God we trust” signs.

And if you think these bills don’t have a shot at passing muster in the U.S. Supreme Court (should they be appealed on constitutional grounds), guess again.

Texas lawmakers noted that the Supreme Court paved the way for these bills after it sided with Joe Kennedy, the high school football coach in Washington state who was fired for praying at football games. The court ruled that Kennedy was praying as a private citizen, not as an employee of the district.

Know who represented that coach? The First Liberty Institute, the organization that brought us Matthew Kacsmaryk, the federal judge in Texas who lit the legal fuse to ban the abortion medication mifepristone from the marketplace.

How delightfully incestuous....

Texas state Sen. Phil King, author of Senate Bill 1515, said the Ten Commandments are part of American heritage and it’s time to bring them back into the classroom.

I just checked the Constitution. I didn’t find a single mention of the Ten Commandments. Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wants to pardon a man convicted of murder. (Might wanna check that Sixth Commandment, Governor.)

In a statement, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said that the bills are a win for religious freedom in Texas. “I will never stop fighting for religious liberty in Texas,” the Republican’s statement said. “Allowing the Ten Commandments and prayer back into our public schools is one step we can take to make sure that all Texans have the right to freely express their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

I thought that was called “church.”

Shoving the Ten Commandments in the face of all children isn’t what I’d call “religious liberty.” While students who don’t give consent don’t have to participate in prayer and Bible readings, it’s not like they won’t be aware of it, perhaps intimidated and influenced by peer pressure all too common among school kids.

Indeed, the First Commandment is straight out of Exodus and Deuteronomy, two books from the Old Testament. It reads: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”

Maybe some of those kids will bring a Muslim prayer rug to class. Let’s see what happens when an imam requests to lead a classroom in the midday call to prayer. You can hand out the prayer rugs and point the students in the direction of Mecca. Or perhaps we can have a rabbi lead students in readings from the five books of the Jewish Pentateuch.

I’m also wondering which version of the Ten Commandments they’re posting?

The Ten Commandments, of course, are a part of Jewish heritage known as the Decalogue, but even within that religion, the precepts and their ordering are slightly different in the Medieval Roman and Greek Orthodox traditions.

I don’t expect Sen. King or any other lawmaker in Texas to respond to my query. It’s too complicated for them to answer and, besides, they seem to have little interest in history. Any history other than their own interpretation of it.

Case in point: In a statement, one fellow state Republican called the separation of church and state a “false doctrine” and tweeted, “Our schools are not God-free zones.”

Yeah, well, your schools aren’t Constitution-free zones, either.

How about these lawmakers spend more time seeing what children can learn from a school rather than focusing on what they can force the kids to learn?

Sorry, we can’t do that either. In Texas, religious indoctrination is OK, but telling the truth about the country’s racist past and present is out.

Oh, and for what it’s worth, the nation’s original motto was “E pluribus unum” or “Out of many, one.” “In God we trust” was adopted by Congress in 1956 when lawmakers decided this would somehow show those godless commies in Soviet Russia a thing or two.

There is absolutely no reason for public schools to compel children to engage in organized religious activities. That’s what Sunday school and parents are for.

Imagine the outrage of a bill proposing to teach history and science lessons at church on Sunday and post, “in a conspicuous place,” the Constitution in every church with the First Amendment in bold type. Let’s have a bill requiring Sunday schools to include the Bill of Rights in their curriculum.

Ten Commandments, Ten Amendments. Seems fair...

Two legal principles are in play here. The obvious one is the First Amendment, which states in its first clause, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The Supreme Court has traditionally interpreted that to mean government actions must have a “secular purpose.”

Given these are the very first words in the Bill of Rights, the nation’s founding legal document, the Framers clearly put a premium on this separation...

It raises an annoying question: Do the Texas lawmakers not know what’s in the United States Constitution?

Take Texas state Sen. Mayes Middleton (R-Galveston), who authored one of the Texas bills (Senate Bill 1396) and called the separation of church and state a “false doctrine.” (And please don’t bring up Rep. Lauren Boebert; we already know the Colorado Republican is a vain and vacuous pathogen of ignorance.) Does the senator not know that of the 13 original Colonies, 12 were founded as refuges from religious persecution of one kind or another. (Only Georgia, being a debtor’s colony, was not.) And Rhode Island was founded by a guy fleeing the Pilgrims because after they’d fled the persecution in Britain, they decided to do their own persecuting once they got here and were intolerant of anybody who didn’t agree with them. That’s why Roger Williams established Providence.

If the Framers, who were men of great education (apparently, unlike our Texas lawmakers) had wanted to establish a particular religion, they certainly would’ve said it in no uncertain terms.

So you can’t look at the original 13 Colonies and contend that the Framers intended for anything but a government expressly providing for religious liberty and a separation between civil and ecclesiastical authority.

Never mind the Founding Fathers’ religious convictions (or lack thereof). Yes, some were pious; some were not. Some prayed; others had no use for it. But together, they agreed to keep religion and state separate, which is why our founding documents are devoid of religious instruction. Why do we find that so difficult to understand?

Are the Texas lawmakers that ignorant? Or do they just plain not give a damn?

(Full article at [msn.com]