In its umpteenth case concerning the display of religious symbols on public space, the Supreme Court heard arguments this week in the matter of Pleasant Grove City v Summum.
Briefly, the case concerns the challenge of the Summum religious sect to the city of Grove Park, Utah to erect its own monument of Seven Aphorisms in the same park where a monument of the Ten Commandments already stands. The Decalogue was contributed by the Fraternal Order of Eagles to honor boy scouts, something they have done in hundreds of other locations around the country.
The Seven Principles of Summum (aka Aphorisms) are: Psychokinesis, Correspondence, Vibration, Opposition, Rhythm, Cause & Effect and Gender. The leader of the sect is Corky Ra (short for Summum Bonum Amon Ra, ne Claude Nowell) who developed this philosophy based on Gnostic Christianity in 1975, after meeting with some Summa individuals (Wikipedia didn’t specify whether these were extra-terrestrial). In this case, as in all the others concerning the establishment clause or freedom of speech, the issues concern limits on the government to espouse a particular religious belief, the rights of minority religious groups for equal time, the slippery slope of government endorsement of religion and the subtext of whether this country was founded on Judaeo-Christian principles. One thing that will not be considered is whether those psychokinetic, vibrating, rhythmic aphorisms might be fun to try.
Despite the entertainment value in some of these cases, it’s clear that a lot of serious public time and money is devoted to ever more complicated, okay wacky, scenarios that will be difficult, if not impossible, to categorically fit under one ruling.
As a way of releasing our eminent justices from the repeated chore of disentangling the legal nuances of creches, menorahs, fir trees, wreaths, pledges, commandments and aphorisms (to name just a few), I propose that we shorten our ten commandments to the bottom secular six, henceforth to be called the Hexalogue. Sure, we’d lose the colorful imagery of a jealous god and graven images, and we’d miss the mandated requirement of a day off, but we’d still retain the three that form the cornerstone of western civilization: no killing, stealing or perjuring, and we’d retain the outmoded proscription to honor parents and eschew adultery.
The one prohibiting the coveting of neighbors’ wives, fields, servants, oxen and houses should be posted on every Style section of the New York Times, created to make us all sinners in that category.
Now that the country is spiraling into an economic cyclone, those latter commandments may experience a default resurgence as money is vital for divorce, children leaving the home and even the spare time essential for serious coveting. The most significant boon to eliminating the four commandments concerning God and the Sabbath would be the immediate decrease in the ability of the ACLU to waste all our time and resources on endless litigation, properly known as kvetching over minutiae. It would also ensure that the Corky Ra’s of American would stay out of our public parks and remain in their own nesting grounds where they’re only a bother to other consenting Summums and Sumdads.
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