An admitted Satanist drove his vehicle into the Ten Commandments monument outside the Oklahoma state house, breaking it into pieces.
Michael Reed, Jr., says that Satan told him to destroy the monument and then urinate on it.
Reed destroyed the monument on Thursday and then walked into the Oklahoma City Federal Building on Friday stating that he was going to kill President Obama. He was taken into custody by the Secret Service for the threats.
Reed reportedly was placed into a mental hospital and is being indefinitely detained.
The ACLU, which had been actively trying to remove the monument, issued a condemnation of the action while still attacking Christians and those who support the monument.
“The ACLU of Oklahoma and our clients are outraged at this apparent act of vandalism,” it stated. “Our Oklahoma and federal Constitutions seek to create a society in which people of all faiths and those of no faith at all can coexist as equals without fear of repressions from the government or their neighbors. Whether it is politicians using religion as a political tool or vandals desecrating religious symbols, neither are living up to the full promise of our founding documents.”
Several elected leaders, including Governor Mary Fallin, have said they will pay money from their own pockets to rebuild the monument.
An Oklahoma judge has ruled that a Ten Commandments monument is Constitutional.
The American Civil Liberties Union had filed suit against the monument claiming that it was an illegal endorsement of religion by the government. The ACLU said that the position of the Oklahoma Capitol Preservation Commission that the monument was historical in nature was overridden by the religious message.
Judge Thomas Prince sided with the OCPC. He said that the monument served a historical purpose witting among 51 other expressive monuments on the Capitol grounds.
“Today’s ruling is a clear message that the Ten Commandments can be displayed on public grounds like the Oklahoma Capitol because of the historical role the text has played in the founding of our nation,” said Attorney General Scott Pruitt. “The U.S. Supreme Court found constitutional a nearly identical monument in Texas. We were confident in the state’s case from the start and appreciate the court’s thoughtful consideration and ruling in the state’s favor.”
The monument, proposed by Rep. Mike Ritze in 2009 and paid for completely by Ritze, had no taxpayer dollars involved in the creation or placement.
The Supreme Court is being asked to weigh in on the constitutionality of states issuing license plates with the ”Choose Life” slogan.
The Alliance Defending Freedom filed an appeal on Friday with the court on behalf of the speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, Thom Tills, and the president pro tem of the North Carolina Senate, Phil Berger. The appeal comes after a three-judge panel with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the license places were unconstitutional.
The ADF says “state governments have the right to advance messages consistent with their public policies.” The Supreme Court, the ADF notes, has already affirmed that right in other cases.
The ACLU of North Carolina brought the initial suit against the plates because there were no pro-abortion license plates offered at the same time.
The “Choose Life” plates cost an extra $25, of which $15 goes to a pregnancy care fellowship that helps with pregnancy care centers in the state. If the ACLU is successful in removing the plates, thousands of women in North Carolina will be denied pregnancy care coverage because the ACLU is doing nothing to replace the funds that will be lost.
A Louisiana sheriff says that he is not going to cancel a planned public prayer event even if the ACLU is objecting to the event as unconstitutional.
Sheriff Julian Whittington of Bossier Parish, Louisiana is hosting the second annual “In God We Trust” rally on the Fourth of July. The event will include food, games, prayer and what the Sheriff termed “patriotic and God-lifting music.” The event is taking place on the grounds of a sheriff’s substation in Bossier, property that is owned by the city.
The ACLU is complaining that the existence of the event on the city property means they’re violating church and state and the event needs to be shut down no matter how much of a benefit it is to the city.
Sheriff Whittington said he’s not the least bit concerned about the ACLU.
“Not only am I elected to serve the people of Bossier Parish, but I live here and my family lives here. I think Bossier Parish is a better place with Christianity and Christian values involved in it,” Whittington told the Shreveport Times. “I don’t work for anybody in Washington. What they do, what they say, I couldn’t really care less.”
The ACLU says the event is telling non-Christian residents of the area that “they are less than equal and not worthy of support by their sheriff” even though Sheriff Whittington has not made any statements nor taken any actions that back up the ACLU’s assertion.
The Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision in favor of a pro-life group that wanted to challenge an Ohio law that put them at risk for a lawsuit if someone felt their political ads were “false.”
The Susan B. Anthony List had sued a now-former Democratic U.S. Congressman who had claimed the group lied about him in a campaign ad that said he supported taxpayer funded abortion because of his support of the Affordable Care Act. While the Congressman dropped his complaint against the group under the Ohio law, the group sued to say the law was unconstitutional.
The group said that the lawsuit by former Rep. Steve Driehaus also violated the group’s freedom of speech. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled the group had no standing to pursue a lawsuit because the suit against them had been dropped after the election was over.
The ACLU, a very anti-life legal group, surprised observers by backing SBA List in the case.
“Speech is rarely black and white,” an ACLU spokesman said. “If the government silences one side of the debate, the public is less informed and others might be fearful of criticizing elected officials. The answer to unpopular speech is not less, but more speech.”
Anti-life groups said the case is about the “right to lie” despite the fact the SBA List has shown the Affordable Care Act includes multiple abortion funding provisions.
The North Carolina House of Representatives has passed a bill that would protect the rights of students to express their religion along with allowing teachers and staff to voluntarily participate in student-led religious activities at schools.
The bill, SB370, was presented to the House after an elementary school student was banned from reading a self-written poem about her grandfather. The grandfather was a World War II veteran who often cited his prayers for protection as part of his stories of service. The school said the student could not mention God.
The bill states that students may “[e]xpress religious viewpoints in a public school to the same extent and under the same circumstances as a student is permitted to express viewpoints on nonreligious topics or subjects in the school.”
The bill also prohibits any teacher from issuing a bad grade to a student because they may not like a student’s religious beliefs. In addition, the bill includes protections for teachers and staff to be a part of student-led activities in schools that include religious worship.
“Local boards of education may not prohibit school personnel from participating in religious activities on school grounds that are initiated by students at reasonable times before or after the instructional day so long as such activities are voluntary for all parties and do not conflict with the responsibilities or assignments of such personnel,” the bill states.
The ACLU has taken issue with the bill.
The bill is expected to be approved by the Senate.
Graduates of a Virginia high school thumbed their nose at the demands of the ACLU that a song sung at graduations since 1940 be banned because it references God.
Students at Thomas Walker High School in Ewing, Virginia locked arms after receiving their diplomas and sang “God Be With You Till We Meet Again.” The song has been sung during graduation since the school’s 1940 founding.
The ACLU had sent a threatening e-mail to school officials saying that students should be banned from singing the song, even at their own initiation, because the song makes a reference to God.
ACLU lawyer Rebecca Glenberg, in addition to wanting to remove any references to God from the graduation ceremony, also objected to a plaque of the Ten Commandments being displayed in a school hallway. The administration responded to the anti-Christianist demand by removing the plaque and eliminating the song from the ceremony.
The students, however, chose to revolt and refused to let the ACLU deny them their Constitutional right to express their faith.
The students also rose and recited the Lord’s Prayer at the invocation because it had also been removed from the ceremony.
A bill that would have mandated Pennsylvania schools display the phrase “In God We Trust” within their buildings has been weakened in an attempt to get it passed.
Representative Rick Saccone of Allegheny County has a history of introducing laws to acknowledge God’s role in the history of America. Saccone was behind the 2012 bill that declared the 2012 “The Year of the Bible” in the state.
Saccone introduced the “National Motto Display Act” to recognize the 150th anniversary of the phrase being placed on American currency by once Pennsylvania governor James Pollock. Pollack introduced the phrase during his time as the director of the United States Mint in Philadelphia.
“Our youth need to hear the story of our heritage and learn from positive role models in a time of decaying values,” Saccone stated. “The story of our national motto is a positive story and one that is uniquely Pennsylvanian.”
The bill was weakened by changing the mandate to post the phrase to an recommendation that schools may post the mandate at their option. The change unanimously passed the state House.
The Pennsylvania ACLU said that if the bill becomes law, schools will be placed as risk for lawsuits if they post the phrase.
The state of Louisiana is moving closer to naming the Holy Bible the official state book.
A committee in the House of Representatives approved the legislation last week and the bill now moves to the entire House for discussion and floor vote. The House Committee on Municipal, Parochial and Cultural Affairs passed the bill on an 8 to 5 vote.
The bill’s sponsor says that the purpose of the measure is not an attempt to establish an official state religion.
“It’s not to the exclusion of anyone else’s sacred literature,” Republican Representative Thomas Carmody told the Christian Post. Carmody said the Bible reflects America’s history and founding principles as outlined by the Founding Fathers.
Critics of the bill say its unnecessary and makes the state open to lawsuits by anti-Christian activists. The ACLU of Louisiana has also expressed their concerns about the bill saying the official state book should related to the history of Louisiana.
A North Carolina license plate that encourages people to “Choose Life” has been ruled unconstitutional by a federal panel.
Pro-abortion activists had sued to have the plates removed saying it was an unconstitutional promotion of religion by the state, but settled for the ruling regarding First Amendment issues.
The three-judge panel on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with a lower court judge that said the legislature’s refusal to allow pro-abortion messages to be placed on license plates while allowing the anti-abortion “Choose Life” violated the First Amendment rights of some citizens.
A spokeswoman for Attorney General Roy Cooper said he is reportedly reviewing the ruling to see if they will appeal to the full appeals court or to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The 4th Circuit had previously ruled that “Choose Life” license plates from South Carolina were also unconstitutional. The ACLU has been pushing the cases against the Choose Life license plates.
