Granite monuments and religious fervor.

Doing some research recently on the Ten Commandments. And found a few interesting facts I thought I would share. First of course we have to define what the Ten Commandments are. The most common belief is that they are the commandments brought down from the mountain by Moses in the old testament. Of course there are different versions of what he brought down. The Catholics remove the graven images one. (Clearly as they have all those statues of Mary) The King James version differs from the Torah version. Mostly in small detail. But it's clear they are different. There are 613 laws in the Bible, the Ten Commandments are taken from these. In one version of the story Moses brings down 40 commandments, not just the 10 that most rabbinical or christian religions believe in. But what I wanted to know was where did all those granite monuments standing in front of public buildings in the United States come from? I discovered we have Cecil B. Demille to blame for that. Apparently as a publicity stunt for the release of his movie The Ten Commandments, he had a few built. And had the Fraternal Order of Eagles work to place them near government buildings. Yul Brynner attended one of the ceremonies. The F.O.E. continued to place another 2000 of them after Hollywood lost interest over the years. The Supreme Court was in two cases asked to reach a decision on whether they violated the constitution. In one case they said the monument was a violation of the constitution. (In Kentucky Mcreary vs ACLU of Kentucky) and had to be removed. (Which it was.) In another case they said that the monument could stay. (Van Orden vs Perry in Texas) But voiced some doubt in the statement by Justice Breyer that it served a "mixed but primarily non-reglious purpose." which he described as "borderline." So it behooves us to remember that when we see a Ten Commandment Monument in front of a public building. It was part of an advertising campaign in the late 50's for a hollywood movie.

And this is one of them. What a strange mixed up world we live in. Ciao for now.