Trial Over Arkansas’ Ten Commandments Monument Delayed

Ten Commandments Monument, , , ,

A trial over Arkansas’ monument of the Ten Commandments has been postponed due to COVID-19.

In 2015 Sen. Jason Rapert (R – Conway) sponsored a law authorizing a monument of the Ten Commandments on the Arkansas State Capitol Grounds.

The monument was paid for with private funds, and it was placed on the Capitol lawn on June 27, 2017.

Less than 24 hours later, a man plowed a vehicle into the monument, completely destroying it.

The monument was rebuilt and replaced on the Capitol grounds in April of 2018.

Shortly afterward, the American Humanist Association, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and the Satanic Temple all filed legal challenges to have the monument removed.

The lawsuit was set to go to trial this month, but due to disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, the trial is being delayed 60 – 90 days.

As we have written before, Arkansas’ monument of the Ten Commandments is identical to one the U.S. Supreme Court ruled constitutional in Texas in 2005.

Frankly, there just shouldn’t be anything controversial about a monument honoring the significance of the Ten Commandments.

Historians have long recognized the Ten Commandments as one of the earliest examples of the rule of law in human history, and they have helped shape the laws in countries around the world.

Arkansas’ monument simply honors that legacy.

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Washington Post Highlights Forced Abortion, Genocide in China

Current Events,
China’s regime reportedly has forced some 1.5 million people into reeducation camps and subjected others to forced abortions, sterilizations, and organ harvesting.

This week the editorial board at The Washington Post penned an op-ed column highlighting forced abortions and sterilizations in China — which the editors say ultimately amounts to genocide.

China’s communist party is targeting Uighur Muslims and other minority groups who live in the country’s western Xinjiang province.

The editorial board writes,

[N]ew evidence shows that China is systematically using pregnancy checks, forced intrauterine devices, sterilization and even abortion to reduce the population of Uighurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang. . . .

The measures fall within the definition of genocide in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which includes “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”

Besides forced abortions and sterilizations, an independent tribunal found credible evidence last year that China also forcibly harvests organs from Uighurs and others.

China has forced Uighur Muslims into “reeducation camps” that NPR recently noted are “probably the largest incarceration of an ethnoreligious minority since the Holocaust.”

COVID-19 has taught us a painful lesson about how what happens on the other side of the planet can affect lives all over the world. We cannot afford to sit idly by while China’s communist regime commits these sorts of atrocities.

You can read the Washington Post’s entire editorial column here.

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