The Ten Commandments of Texas

Blessed greetings From Texas, where Governor Greg Abbott recently signed a bill that will require public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. Teachers must display the Commandments as a poster or framed copy, at least 16 inches by 20 inches, in a typeface that is clearly legible from any part of the room. Supporters of the bill say the Ten Commandments are a cornerstone of American history, though they may have that confused with the Ten Amendments in the Bill of Rights.

Texas will be instructing “thou shalt not kill” even though it has the death penalty, “thou shalt not steal” even though its attorney general, Ken Paxton, paid a $300,000 settlement last year to avoid criminal securities fraud charges, and “thou shalt worship no other gods before me” even though the mascot for the main state university is an enormous Longhorn steer named Bevo, the living manifestation of a golden calf, or at least an orange one.

This isn’t the first time a state government has gone full Mount Sinai on the public school system. Louisiana and Arkansas have tried posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms, but the courts have struck down those laws. Texas is a much bigger catfish.

The Texas law comes at a moment when the religious morality police are educationally ascendant. The state constantly roils with annoying controversies over the content of public-school libraries, with conservative parents, though not just Christian ones, arguing that schools shouldn’t be exposing their children to narratives like the one in Maia Kobabe’s admittedly squidgy graphic memoir Gender Queer.

The Supreme Court just upheld parental rights in those matters in their Mahmoud V. Taylor decision. With a 6-3 majority, the Court argued that Maryland’s Montgomery County School District had no right to force kids to read LGBTQ-friendly picture books “designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated, and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected.” On her Substack, Georgetown Constitutional law Professor Asma Uddin argues that the Mahmoud decision shows that “accommodation is not always required – but when schools fuse moral messaging with mandatory participation, procedural safeguards matter.”

But if trans-friendly picture books are moral messaging–and the Supreme Court has ruled thusly – then the Ten Commandments are definitely moral messaging. This doesn’t mean that the messaging is wrong, but it’s coming from a very specific religious point of view. Though the Commandments belong to the Old Testament, the Texas Legislature isn’t exactly loaded with Jewish representatives. This is a conservative Christian play, a clear rebuke to woke progressive educators who are trying to queer the system. It’s also a bold middle finger to true civil libertarians, who rightly argue that the founding principle of the United States isn’t Christian morality, but religious and intellectual pluralism, based in the separation of church and state.

The irony is that Greg Abbott, and the state of Texas writ large, doesn’t seem to want public education to exist at all. Another bill the Leg passed this year establishes a school voucher system that will allow families to use public funds to establish education savings accounts to pay for private school tuition or homeschooling expenses. They can get up to $10,000 per students, or up to $30,000 for students with disabilities.

Arguments exist for school vouchers. The Texas public education system, like the public education systems elsewhere in the country, is bad–sclerotic and inflexible. The state seems to want to pick away at that system, student by student. But in the meantime, for those who choose, like the losing side of the Brexit vote, to Remain, the state intends to force their kids to eye-glaze at the Ten Commandments from their desks.

Meanwhile, a lawsuit is already in the works. Several “faith leaders” and Christian families have sued in federal court in Dallas, arguing that the state will be forcing religion on students. One woman says she’s concerned that the posting of the Ten Commandments will force her to explain some very grownup concepts to her young children. She, the lawsuit states, “does not desire that her minor children be instructed by their school about the biblical conception of adultery.”

If you thought Gender Queer was bad, wait until kids learn about David and Bathsheba. Or about Ken Paxton, a major driver of the Ten Commandments push, whose wife, we recently learned, has filed for divorce on “Biblical grounds”. Looks like Paxton needs to go back to school.