Louisiana Passes Law Requiring Ten Commandments in Public Schools, Colleges

Education
Above: Arkansas’ monument of the Ten Commandments authorized in 2015.

Last week Louisiana passed a law requiring public schools, colleges, and universities to display the Ten Commandments in their classrooms.

The law highlights the historical impact that the Ten Commandments have had on American government, and it provides how each school should display them, based on past court rulings.

Arkansas does not have a law requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments. However, state law does provide for the national motto — In God We Trust — to be displayed at school. Arkansas also has placed a privately-funded monument of the Ten Commandments on the state capitol grounds.

The monument is identical to one ruled constitutional at the capitol building in Texas.

Shortly after Arkansas’ monument was unveiled, atheist groups and the Satanic Temple joined a lawsuit to have it removed from the capitol grounds.

The case originally was set to go to trial in July of 2020, but the trial was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The lawsuit has remained in limbo ever since.

As we have said many times, there 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 philosophy and laws in countries around the world.

Arkansas’ monument commemorates that legacy. It’s good to see Louisiana take similar steps to commemorate that legacy as well.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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Most Americans Still Say It’s Morally Wrong to Change Genders

LGBT, ,

Earlier this month Gallup released a survey showing most Americans still believe it is morally wrong to change genders.

The findings track with Gallup’s survey results from 2021 and 2023 — which also found most people believe it’s morally wrong to change genders, and that a growing share of Americans think athletes ought to compete according to their biological sex rather than their gender identity.

Oddly, the same Gallup survey published this month found most Americans oppose “laws that ban certain types of gender-affirming care for minors.”

But the survey’s questions about “gender-affirming care” were not as straightforward as its questions about whether it’s right or wrong to change genders. With that in mind, it is possible that the wording of the questions may have biased or simply confused the survey’s participants.

Regardless, it’s important for people to understand that more and more, scientific evidence shows sex-reassignment procedures are harmful to children.

Three years ago a major hospital in Sweden announced that it would no longer give puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to kids. This year the United Kingdom announced a new policy protecting children from being given puberty-blocking drugs.

In 2021 the Arkansas Legislature overwhelmingly passed the Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act. The SAFE Act is a good law that protects children in Arkansas from cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and sex-reassignment surgeries. That law is currently tied up in court, but we believe our judicial system ultimately will recognize that it is a good law and uphold it as constitutional.

It is important for our laws to protect children from sex-change procedures and give them legal options they can follow if they are harmed by one of these procedures. Laws like Arkansas’ SAFE Act do exactly that.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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