NEW ORLEANS (WGNO-TV) – State Senator Royce Duplessis, (D) New Orleans, calls Louisiana’s new Ten Commandments law unnecessary and embarrassing.
And that’s just for starters.
Duplessis, who voted against the bill that became law with Governor Jeff Landry’s signature on Wednesday (June 20), says the law is just the start of an effort by the Louisiana legislature’s conservative majority to take control of the state’s public and private institutions.
“Once it starts, where does it end,” asks Duplessis. “What’s to stop them from coming into your church and saying, ‘We don’t like the way you’re preaching the Bible’.”
Duplessis also calls the conservative majority “hypocritical.” He says the legislature has advocated against schools’ teaching the history of slavery, while claiming the Commandments form a “historical” document, rather than a religious one.
Duplessis is joined in that opinion by liberal activist Chaz Stevens, of Boca Raton, Florida.
Stevens is sending copies of the Commandments to Louisiana schools– copies written in Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and other languages– that are likely not what the lawmakers had in mind when they wrote the law.
But if the intention of posting the Commandments is to present them as historical, rather than religious, Stevens says is shouldn’t matter if they’re written in languages used by people who are not Christian.
Stevens calls his activism “malicious” compliance.” He sent similar posters in foreign languages to Texas schools several years ago, when the Texas legislature was considering a Ten Commandments law.
“Everything I do is a peaceful protest, he says.
“What I do is flip bureaucracy on its head.”