c. 2003 Religion News Service
LORAIN, Ohio _ The Ten Commandments have stood quietly in a Lorain park for 41 years, etched on a monument that barely gets noticed and creating none of the controversy that has engulfed Alabama.
The tombstone-like tablet donated by the Lorain Fraternal Order of Eagles fronts Lakeview Park.
The Eagles paid for tablets to be erected in front of courthouses and other public places beginning in the 1950s. Some reports say the push dovetailed with the release of Cecil B. De Mille’s “The Ten Commandments” film in 1956. Another monument sits in front of City Hall in Norwalk.
Ray Vasvari, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Ohio, said there are enough displays of the Ten Commandments on public property that he could fight the cases every day, year-round.
“That doesn’t mean it’s OK,” Vasvari said. “The fact that it’s an old constitutional violation doesn’t mean there is no violation.”
But the ACLU has to choose its battles carefully, he said. Some displays are more disrespectful to the Constitution than others, and those are the ones that he takes to court, he said.
Exhibits in courthouses and schools, Vasvari said, are particularly egregious. A courthouse is a place where the Constitution is sacred, and children in schools can be confused by displays of religious words, he said.
In Ohio, the ACLU is fighting a Ten Commandments case in Lucas County, where a tablet greets visitors to the county courthouse. The ACLU has previously won the removal of displays from a courthouse in Mansfield and a high school in Adams County.
In Alabama, some religious groups have cheered Chief Justice Roy Moore, who has refused to remove the Ten Commandments from the Alabama Judicial Building as his colleagues on the court ordered.
Lorain Safety Director Craig Miller said he “hasn’t heard a peep” about the nearly 6-foot-tall marker in his city.
“It’s a nice monument,” Miller said. “We’re not planning on taking it down.”
No one has ever officially complained about the marker, even in 1997 when the ACLU contemplated suing the city over a Nativity scene displayed in another city park, city officials said.
Several officials said they did not even know the monument existed.
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