Miscellaneous

If Only He Had Been Flanked By Louis Armstrong and Ellen DeGeneres

By Anne Skove, Esq.

OK, one more time...here's the rule about religious imagery in public places: it must be but one choice in a smorgasbord of traditions.

Not to be confused with cafeteria Catholics, it's possible to display a Christian (or other religious) image in a public place if other traditions are also represented. Thus, a menorah is out of place; put a teutonic Christmas tree, tv elf, and strategically-placed Martha Stewart bows, and voila! Legality!

Same it is with traditions of lawgivers displays in courthouses or other govenment buildings. Just Moses -- nope. Just the Ten Commandments (in our opinion there should have been a few more) -- ditto. But pair Moses, his stone Blackberry, Hammurabi, Solon, Solomon, and Thor (for good measure) in a group and you've got yourself a nifty, educational, and very legal building. Bonus points if it's all so old you'd have to deface an historic stone frieze to correct the problem.

A U.S. District Court found for the ACLU in its case against the Slidell City Court in St. Tammany Parish, Lousiana. (It's OK to call your counties "parishes" if it's a holdover from French rule.) The ACLU was all up in arms about the court's display of Jesus and the New Testament. (Evidently the ACLU thinks this is *the* most pressing problem in Lousiana...but we digress.)

Jesus stays. He has now been joined by a parade of lawgivers throughout history! Moses, Charlemagne, Napoleon, and others have been added, possibly in some type of Last Supper of the Lawgivers rendition.

See La. Courthouse's Lone Jesus Painting Deemed Unconstitutional, Michael Kunzelman, AP (April 17, 2008).

p.s. If you're wondering about the title of this post -- think famous Lousianans (not Jesus, but the other two).

Full post as published by court-o-rama.org on April 18, 2008 (boomark / email).