The teen, an alderman and Ten Commandments

The teen, an alderman and Ten Commandments

The young man's letter questioning a stone monument in a city park prompts a tempest of biblical proportions.

By MARY JACOBY, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 17, 2003

FREDERICK, Md. - The phone would ring at dawn, not long after the newspaper had landed on front porches around town, carrying the latest on the teenager challenging the Ten Commandments.

"How does it feel to have raised a Communist?" one caller hissed.

Phyllis Trettien would try to reason with them. Her son wasn't attacking religion, she'd say. He was raising a serious constitutional issue about separation of church and state.

"They'd generally just hang up or scream at me, some Bible verse. They'd accuse me of being a horrible parent," she said. "Like there was evil afoot in Frederick."

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http://www.sptimes.com/2003/08/17/Worldandnation/The_teen__an_alderman.shtml

Sometimes I think those people really want Civil War 2

They are psychotic with religious fervor

Ugh.

has had the guts to stand up for his beliefs for a long time. I can't believe that the school counsellors told him 'not to rock the power structure' when he talked back to bullies harrassing him. I hope he does well at Johns Hopkins.

the sin of idolatry. They make an idol out of the Bible. True believers read it and are inspired by the SPIRIT of it. Fundamentalists worship the LETTER of it. They idolize it -- it becomes a fetish instead of a message.

When there is no ambiguity or doubt, something very human and humane dies in a person . . .

ON EDIT--The family makes the common mistake of thinking that people like this can be reasoned with. They should enjoy themselves--tell irate callers that their son worships Lenin and you can't have a black mass in the park with those commandments there etc.

It's right there IN the Ten Commandments -- DUH!!! And Jesus would be sickened by the current crop of TEn Commandment plaques and monuments. He would be the first in line to flip that sucker over and tear it down, just like he did with the moneychangers' tables in the Temple.

If the Word is etched in one's heart, you don't need it carved in stone.

Bake

Fundies are an insult to peace-loving and tolerant Christians everywhere..they are guilty of EXACTLY the same sort of thought-crimes and heinous intolerance that they so viciously oppose when espoused in the name of a different invisible cloud being...

Hypocrits..every last one of them...

TB

Did they use the Protestant version of the Ten Commandments, the Catholic version, or the Jewish version? They're all slightly different from one another, and using one instead of the others means that the government favors one variety of Judeo-Christianity over another.

My guess is that it's probably the Protestant version, which means it's a slap in the face of Catholics and Jews as well as Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, etc.

This is fascinating:

Local Eagles chapters, known as "aeries," distributed 4,000 of the stones in the 1950s and 1960s. They were prominently inscribed with the phrase, "I AM the LORD thy GOD" and were decorated with stars of David, symbols of Christ and an eagle clutching an American flag.

Frederick's monument was dedicated on June 29, 1958, in front of the County Courthouse, which later became City Hall.

I'm both a historian and a long-time Talibornagain watcher. About 50 years ago, we went through a religious revival in this country that was beaten back. These 4000 markers are probably all over the country and have historical significance as evidence of that period. They should erect a historical marker next to them, explaining they were erected to create publicity for a movie. Give people the real context with good interpretation, then leave it alone.