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Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2004

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  For once, Moore critics who successfully sued to remove his granite Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building agree with him.

"Moore's case is so extreme and these other cases are not. In neither of these other cases is there concrete evidence out of the mouth of the defendant that he had religious motives," said Richard Cohen, legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear disputes from Kentucky and Texas over public displays of the Ten Commandments.

In the Kentucky case, the commandments were displayed at two county courthouses with other documents, such as the Magna Carta and Declaration of Independence. In the Texas case, a Ten Commandments monument is joined by various historical monuments on the Capitol grounds.

Moore's monument was displayed alone in the rotunda of the state judicial building, installed by him without consultation with other justices. He said the Kentucky and Texas monuments, because they are paired with historical artifacts or markers, miss the religious point of his.

"The difference between those cases and my case is the acknowledgment of a sovereign God. It's that simple," Moore said at a news conference.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Moore's appeal of U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson's order requiring him to move his Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the state judicial building. Then last week, the U.S. Supreme Court turned back Moore's appeal of his ouster from office for ignoring Thompson's order.

Moore said the justices turned his case away "because they put themselves above the law and above God."

Joe Conn, spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the type of Ten Commandments display was the big difference between the court rejecting the Alabama case and taking the Texas and Kentucky cases.

"Judge Moore put up his display alone, sending a clear message of government endorsement of religion," Conn said.

Moore predicted the Supreme Court will uphold the Texas display because it was "secularized" from the beginning by nearby historical artifacts, but will reject the Kentucky display because other documents weren't put around it until it was challenged in court.

"If you secularized it enough, if you reduced it to history enough to deny the sovereignty of God, it's OK," Moore said.

After Moore lost his Ten Commandments case last year, Gov. Bob Riley and the Alabama Supreme Court put up displays in the Capitol and the judicial building that included the Ten Commandments with several other documents, all the same size as the Ten Commandments.

"The current displays are similar to the ones in Kentucky. This could tell us whether those displays meet the requirements of the Constitution," Conn said.

Cohen said the Alabama displays, unlike the Kentucky display, contained a variety of documents from the beginning. Cohen said he sees no problems for the Alabama displays if they were done for truly historic reasons.

"The key question is: Are you doing it for a religious lesson or a history lesson?" Cohen said.

Moore said he doesn't like the Montgomery displays because he said they relegate the Ten Commandments to history and do "not recognize a sovereign God."

"It's completely different from what I did," Moore said.

© 2004 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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