Phyllis Grams does not like being told what to think. So she did something about it. At a spry 66 years young, Phyllis partnered up with the Freedom from Religion Foundation and sued the city of La Crosse over a monument to the Ten Commandments located in a park in the downtown city center.
Well, actually, she started the trial back in 1987, when she was 49, but she got her appeal heard just a few months ago.
She had a showdown with the mayor of La Crosse, and, back in January, got her answer from the federal appeals court.
Honorable Judge Barbara Crabb heard Ms. Gram’s case in Chicago and threw it out.
Why? Ms. Grams could not prove that the mere display of the Ten Commandments, while on city property, injured her. Also, Ms. Grams did not prove that municipal funds were spent on maintaining the monument. Since Ms. Grams is a taxpayer, if she objects to her tax dollars upholding a religious establishment, she can ask that it be stopped.
In legal terms, it is said that you lack standing when you cannot prove an injury or a substantial harm that allows you to remain in court.
Today, two similar cases are going to be heard in front of the Supreme Court. Both involve public displays of the Ten Commandments, one in Kentucky courtrooms, the other in front of the Texas Capitol in Austin.
There is a connection between those current cases and the case in La Crosse. The same group, the Fraternal Order of Eagles, placed the monuments in both La Crosse and Austin. This was done in a frenzy of monument placing in the ’50s and ’60s to remind the public of our moral and historical roots in Christianity and to stick it to those heathen, godless, atheist Commies, and to promote the movie “The Ten Commandments” (That is not a joke. They were promotional movie schwag). There are literally thousands of them littered all over America, causing constitutional-law headaches.
The other connection is that many times people perceive the kinds of folks who bring these cases as crackpots. The case in Austin does not dispel that perception. There, the plaintiff is a homeless Vietnam vet and former attorney who spends his days in the State Law Library in Austin. He saw the monument every day outside the Capitol and decided he opposed its presence within such proximity to Texas’ lawmaking buildings.
Phyllis Grams, however, is a different sort of bird. She’s the wife of a former Wisconsin congressman, a retired school teacher and pretty much a feisty old lady who just does not want her government telling her who to pray to, even indirectly.
So what do I think? I think she is right.
Granted, I find it hard to make the claim that looking at the Ten Commandments or seeing them in a public place offends me. But I was raised Catholic and symbolism is pretty much all that religion has left.
I do not know what it must feel like to be a Jew during Christmas or Muslim any time of the year in this country. When our president goes on about the divine spirit, finding Jesus or whatever other focus-group-tested religious bon mot he feels like tossing out, I can blow it off. But many do not.
Our country is changing second by second. More and more people show up every day for whom Christianity is simply a different point of view. Until we can truly, absolutely grasp that concept, the Ten Commandments have no place in the public realm, tended for by our tax dollars.
Our founding fathers knew that government-established religion was a terrible activity. Many people think the display of these symbols is merely descriptive or part of our history.
To the contrary, the exclusion of religion from government and the inclusion of virtue in your home (in whatever form you choose) is the ideal sought by our founders.
Rob Deters ([email protected]) is a third-year law student.
