Ten Commandments Bullshit

The BBQ Pit
1

Ok, disclaimer, I attended 3rd grade in this county. My grandmother still lives there. You are painted with a broad brush in this county if you are not a christian.

http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061128/LOCAL/211280341&SearchID=73267240014236

A watchdog group is willing to take up lawyers to get them removed.
http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061202/LOCAL/61202010&SearchID=73267240409998
A local letter to the editor takes their “hats off” to the residents of Dixie County.
http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061207/EDITORIALS02/61207015&SearchID=73267240479981

Dixie County Takes Stand
http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061212/EDITORIALS02/61212015&SearchID=73267240550184

Most eloquenty put in that last link:

Please note: They misspelled adultery on the monument. Given what I have known about this county, haven travelled in and out of it for about 30 years, I am amazed they spelled anything wrong. I can also assure you that every uneducated, dog beating, illegal deer hunting, racist, redneck scumbags will come out and preach all day long to prevent these commandments from leaving.

God damn it, can we pull one fucking county into this century? They did this for no other reason that to prove to the rest of the fucking free world that they are RIGHT and by god, what those freaks out there in other godless counties couldn’t do, they CAN. This is a prime example of a county that IS run by religion and church. My fucking 81 year old grandmother should be able to go to the fucking courthouse without putting up with their fundy bullshit. She has put up with it for 30 years in the fucking county. Give her a break.

Oh, she worked for the friends of the library for decades trying to get that place a decent library. But hey, they got big churches.

2

That should state “I am amazed they spelled anything right.”

3

Sigh…

As a Christian, I am baffled by these people. I know they are well intentioned and think they are “defending” God’s place in our society.

Alas, if they want to see Christianity advanced, they should spend their energies on liveing the 10 commandments, not constructing silly monuments.

If they want to emulate Jesus, they should have spent the money used on this monument to support “the least of these” as it says in Matthew 25.

I lump these situations in with those folks who feel that they need to “defend” Christmas. These folks identify as Christians, but don’t want to commit to the message of giving and self-sacrafice that Jesus called espoused. So, in order that they can still self-identtify as X-tians, they invest in these silly endeavors. This way they feel they are fighting the good fight and defending the faith, that they are actively living a Christian life. Placing a slab of marble on a courthouse step is a lot easier than doing what Jesus actually asked for.

Meh. How will they feel when Islam is the dominant religion and they can place the Pillars of Islam on the courthouse steps? Crying for separation of church and state I bet.

4

If I were a Christian, this would cause me to insist that the monument be taken down.

5

I wonder how many churches in Cross City have the Ten Commandments displayed on their front steps (or even within their worship areas)?

6

From the last link in the OP

So the courthouse is a place of worship? Or maybe people are never forced to use the courthouse? I’m sure the non-christians being sued or facing trial will be glad to hear that.

Ignorance obviously flourishes quite well.

7

I am always amused in the course of being annoyed by this shit that these people demonstrate their support for a doctrine that forbids the worship of false idols engaging in the idolatry of all but worshipping the monuments.

8

I just got off the phone with my grandmother. I kind of figured that if she had not been approached, one of her heathen friends might have been. Turns out, I was right. They have approached my grandmother to defend this.

Unfortunately, she is too well versed in the ways of Dixie County to think they deserve anything other than what they are getting. She said all that she has said to anyone is that “if ya’ll are doing this because County Lawyer X says it is legal, what else illegal are you doing?” When she attended the county commission meeting after all this started, someone asked at the end what about the ten commandments, the leader of the commission said that they are staying and closed the meeting.

This is such a closed society. They live in a void. Education is severely lacking. They really don’t have much interaction with outsiders, even though the retirees moving there in the last couple of decades have influenced them a certain amount, they really pride themselves on being backwoods ignorant folks. Honest, there are folks there that brag that they went as far as the 3rd grade. It is not a place where your children do better than you, it is a place where your children have no right to have anything more than you have. There is rampant racism, yet the folks who scream the loudest are complete pieces of poo.

My grandmother feels that the county has no chance of ever changing. She certainly believes that she won’t live long enough to see it. I wish she would take up the fight, but we both know, whether or not that monument is allowed to stay there, it won’t change the people that want it there. They won’t concede the wrong, they will just use it to prove how right they are “in the eyes of god.”

BTW, the county sign at the dump says “Put Phil Dirt Here” It has been there for years. No, there is no resident named Phil Dirt.

Unfortunately, this county may end up the laughing stock, but it has been too long coming. If all the preaching they do made a bit of difference in the quality of the people there, they would all be saints. Trust me, saints are few and far between, not just there either.

Grandma is waiting for all the other religions to demand equal time, she figures it would take up most of the courthouse, but she would love to see it. Start molding your invisible pink unicorns now folks.

9

These kinds of “Christians” are every bit as scary to me as the “Muslims” who cut the heads off reporters. Some of the stuff I’ve read on Christian/conservative websites lately is alarming as hell. They really think they’re in a Holy War. The only thing they hate more than Muslims is “liberals.”

Wait, check that. They hate the homos most of all.

It seems like they’ve gotten worse since the elections. I saw one site where people were claiming that Senator Tim Johnson had been “struck down by God” in order to give control of the Senate back to Republicans. These people are insane. I shudder to think what they’ll do if a Democrat wins the White House. They honestly think that they’re being oppressed if they’re not allowed to use the government to browbeat people with Christianity or if other religions get treated equally. It reminds me of some people I knew in the South who used to complain about how intolerable it was to be put on an equal footing with blacks (getiing rid of segregation was seen as “infringing on the rights of white people”).

10

The monument states that you have to keep the Sabbath holy. What is the courthouse supposed to do, enforce that rule, or disregard the monument? If the latter, why have the monument at all?

11

I agree with this.

There are events that I react to with the feeling that people with genuine anti-religious agenda are pushing the event. But they are very rare, and most of the time such attacks end up being opposed by thosee bugaboos of the persecuted xtian “majority”: The ACLU.

That reality is something that you’d never get most of these bozos to admit. They want to simply wave their bloody shirt (Well, okay, red-ink stained newsprint) and get a visceral reaction. And then establish their own Inquisition.

And whatever merits there might be towards putting up a monument towards the Ten Commandments on public property - if they can’t be bothered to insist on proper spelling that’s plenty reason to tear it down.
On preview, mr. jp, obviously the county will have to pass laws to keep the Sabbath holy. And then define it as Sunday, and only Sunday. Since that’s what it says in the Holy Bible. (Oh, wait, isn’t it Dueteronomy that defines the Sabbath as going from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday? I guess they’ll just have to ignore that…)

12

Seconded. The vehement defense of that sign has elevated it to idol status.

There are still homes in Kentucky and West Virginia without indoor plumbing yet large groups Christians will throw buckets of money and time into a protest and legal battle to protect a monument that very possibly has been forbidden by the Author.

13

I think the way to approach things like this is to call their bluff and go all out to enforce the 10 commandments. Submit referenda to close stores and prohibit football Fri sundown to Sat sundown, lock up the aldulterers, fine people who don’t treat their parents well, tear down the statues of Confederate soldiers, etc.

Then you can start a little religious war by having the Catholics, Jews, and Protestants fight over the numbering of the commandments.

The “Phil Dirt” sign is hysterical.

14

[ Nitpick ]
For some reason, several branches of Lutheranism use the same numbering scheme as Catholics (I don’t know why, it is the least logical of the group) and Jewish sources from the first century (Josephus and Philo) actually used the numbering system currently used by the Calvinist and Anglican (and some Lutheran) groups. I am not sure when the Jewish numbering system changed.
[ /Nitpick ]

15

Bar the doors! I’m agreeing again with Otto.

Actually, Otto,; you’re just a tad wrong. Those folks are worshipping the monument.

16

I have a theory that authoritarian yahoos like the OP describes are actually, in Christian terms, doing the Devil’s work by driving sinners away from the Church.

Not anymore, there isn’t… :smiley:

17

Twenty thousand dollars.

Many of the houses on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota are without any kind of heat unless firewood is donated. The average income is less than $3,900 a year. There is 80 to 85% unemployment.

These people in Dixie County who support this monument are unthinkingly cruel.
They themselves are a poor county and will be losing money before this is over.

18

It is a VERY poor county.

My grandmother slaved for years for the Friends of the Library to get a halfway decent library there. When the Dairy Queen opened, it was a citywide event.

I would venture to guess that 20k is a LOT more than most folks make there in a year or possibly a lifetime.

My grandmother told me of a woman that remarked on how many churches there were there and was surprised because they were only outnumbered by all the beer cans/bottles on the sides of the roads.

She also told me of another sign that says “Do not dump trash at this sight.”

19

I wonder what the outcome would be if someone facing say, a traffic ticket, refused to enter the courthouse because the monument.

20

Simple, they’d issue a bench warrant to arrest the person for ignoring the summons and if the person got a traffic stop anywhere in Florida, he or she would then have the extra hassle of dealing with the outstanding warrant on top of whatever issue they faced for the stop,
It is not as though the county is going to link into the Florida traffic system with a notation “Wanted for trying to avoid our oversized illegal monument.” (And that is provided the county was even aware of the reason for the civil disobedience; if one does not enter the courthouse, how do they know WHY one refused to enter?)