Freedom of religion is greatest when there is a complete separation of church and state and, conversely, religious freedom is least when government is tangled with religion.

Supreme Scandal:
How the Supreme Court Blessed
the Ten Commandments

by

Robert V. Ritter *
[Working Draft]
November 23, 2009

    America’s storied freedom of religion is marred by pervasive Christian tyranny. Our first liberty – freedom from government sponsored religion – prohibits governmental acts “respecting an establishment of religion.”[1] Yet despite this command, Christian Supremacists have frequently gotten members of all three branches of government to betray their oaths of office to uphold and defend the Constitution. Examples include inserting “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance,[2] adopting “In God We Trust” as a national motto[3] and ordering the religious slogan to be put on our coins and currency[4], military bands playing “God Bless America”[5], the Supreme Court opening its sessions with “God save the United States and this honorable Court”[6] and the administrator of the presidential oath appending “so help me God” to the oath prescribed by the Constitution.[7]

    And then along came BLACK MONDAY. On June 26, 2005, five members[8] of the the Supreme Court of the United States lost their legal compass when they blessed a Ten Commandments tombstone in Austin, Texas.[9]

    This ebook is the incredible story about how Judge E.J. Ruegemer, the Fraternal Order of Eagles, city and state governments and the Supreme Court of the United States failed to respect the First Amendment. As a consequence, more than one hundred fifty granite monuments with religious commandments inscribed on them were placed in our city parks, state capitol grounds and courthouse steps in violation of the First Amendment's prohibition “respecting an establishment of religion.”

    It is my hope that the information presented in this ebook and a future legal challenge to a Fraternal Order of Eagles donated tombstone, will lead to the restoration of the Court’s respect for the principle of separation of church and state embodied in the First Amendment.

[Table of Contents below.]

____________
 Footnotes:

* Robert V. Ritter is an attorney practicing in the area of church-state law for a secular nonprofit located in Washington, D.C. He is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court bar and is counsel of record of friend of the court briefs in Pleasant Grove City v. Summum and Salazar v. Buono. He is also co-counsel in Newdow v. Roberts (D.C. Cir. pending) which challenges the infusion of religion into the 2009 presidential inaugural ceremony.

1. Const., amend. 1 –“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
2. Pledge of Allegiance –
3. National motto –
4. Coins and currency –
5. Mititary bands playing God Bless America – I witnessed this at the 2004 U.S. Open mens’ tennis final and was deeply offended by this endorsment of religion by our Armed Forces.
6. Supreme Court –
7. Presidential oath –
8. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer. Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O’Connor, David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented.
9. Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677 (2005) – In this case, the Supreme Court held in a 5-4 decision that the display of a Ten Commandments monolith on the Texas state capitol grounds did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. There was no majority decision and, therefore, no single rational for explaining how the display by the State of Texas of an inherently religious symbol comports with the First Amendment’s prohibition against “an establishment of religion.” Chapter 9 explore some of the rationals given by the majority and suggests that those rationals are either a sham, grossly misleading or more like a foundation built on quicksand than rock.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I – The Scam: “It wasn’t meant to be religions.”

PART II – The Legal Compass

PART III – The Blessing

PART IV – Appendices