Zachary Amaranth said:
Therumancer said:
I don't care for it either, but I have to defend Oklahoma's right to set it's own policies.
Except where it violates the law and/or constitution.
Not entirely so, I believe state and local rights should trump federal regulation. Especially in cases like this where it's a matter of interpretation, which is how such things have been interpreted in the past.
I personally think putting a statue of Baphomet there is ridiculous and can't be defended based on the guidelines that allowed something like "The Ten Commandments" (depicted presumably without any other religious iconography or context, I'm guessing it's like a picture of the tablets, rather than a statue of Moses holding them). However, Oklahoma is a sovereign state and can choose how it wants to interpet the laws.
Part of my point about the Masons and such is that one can't really make a practical argument about removing ALL religious iconography from the government and it's buildings. Even the federal government uses statues of "Lady Justice" and all kinds of masonic symbolism in our seals and such. You'd have to level the entire infrastructure.
A big part of my point is also that the context with which The Constitution was written was far different than the way we tend to interpet it, which is part of the point. Generally speaking freedom of religion was mostly intended to apply to Masonry and branches of Christianity, as a way of allowing both Catholics and Protestants to pray within the US without the state sponsoring one or the other. None of the founding fathers likely would have even given an issue like this a fair hearing, and indeed considered it the height of insanity, they also would have laughed away anyone who was against installing religions iconography (Mason, Christian, or Greco-Roman) in public buildings since they were doing it themselves.
But again, we'll have to agree to disagree. At the end of the day while I'm not entirely right wing, I am pretty much a Republican and believe State Rights when it comes to things like this trump Federal regulation, especially when you look at a long history of precedent with States getting to decide what they want in their own buildings. Yes, I understand the counter argument but I happen to disagree with it.
As I said, feel free to consider the people of Oklahoma idiots for this (I do), but it's their right to be stupid.
From your perspective you'd of course want to ban both statues, which is a valid opinion (albeit one I disagree with), however I'd imagine if you looked closely and wanted to impose those standards you'd also have to wreck every municipal building and historical site in the state to remove ALL traces of any religion. Neither Oklahoma or The Federal government could afford to rebuild all of that in a timely fashion... not to mention as I said that taken to it's conclusion you'd also have to do the same to federal buildings, and almost all state ones, burn and re-print massive amounts of our currency, create new state and governmental seals.... it's just not practical. We got to this point also because the interpretation your using is a fairly modern one, not how the right was interpreted or practiced by the guys who created it (right or wrong).
