And yet on this,

I wonder if we're being silly.

BBC News article on the debate about whether or not it's legal to display the Ten Commandments on U.S. government property.

At least one of the places that the ten commandments were displayed was a court house, right? And aren't these a really early example of a set of laws?

Funny, but in my mind, I see this as a reference to law. I don't actually see it as a government agency trying to influence my religious preferences or practices. Maybe I'd feel different if I weren't Jewish.

Seeing how I stand on other issues, that you can't give an inch, that you should always err on the side of liberalism, well...

I kind of think that the religious icons of *any* religion should be allowed to be displayed proudly, but yeah, maybe not by the actual government. Darn. I guess my problem is that I'm really more humanist by nature, and I think that using religious symbols from *any* religion would be OK, if they were appropriate to the setting. Like, if there's some big statue about a god presiding over a trial or something, but not a statue of Jesus healing the sick. That one would fit in at a hospital, though. I think of religion in terms of decorative items. I bet the fundamentalists would hate that.

Now the issue of requiring a school to have the Ten Commandments posted, as used to be the case in Kentucky, well, that was wrong. Requiring a public school to teach this obviously violates the whole church/state thing. But court houses being allowed to display them? Wiggly.