A Texas Senate bill would require classrooms in public school districts statewide to display a copy of the Ten Commandments if passed and signed into law, according to a report on the ChurchLeaders website.
State Sen. Phil King (R-Weatherford) authored Senate Bill (SB) 1515, which LegiScan showed is left pending in the Senate Committee on Education as of April 5.
The measure would require the Ten Commandments display to be the same size as a poster and use the traditional “Thou shalt …” wording in each commandment.
Austin NBC affiliate KXAN reported that the piece of legislation is reigniting the debate on the separation of church and state, with supporters asserting the Ten Commandments are a part of the nation’s history, while critics argue it would run afoul of religious freedoms.
“I think this would be a good, healthy step for Texas to bring back this tradition of recognizing America’s religious heritage,” King, who is joined by State Sen. Mayes Middleton (R-Galveston) in sponsoring the bill, said, KXAN reported. "Senate bill 1515 restores a little bit of those liberties that were lost.”
Per ChurchLeaders, this isn’t the first time such a bill has been proposed.
While those measures fell through, Gov. Greg Abbott, when he was the state’s attorney general in 2005, won a U.S. Supreme Court case in relation to a Ten Commandments monument on the state capitol grounds.
King said that SB 1515 has a legal foot to stand on thanks to the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, which rendered the so-called “Lemon test” irrelevant, ChurchLeaders reported.
The Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission’s John Litzler is among those who oppose SB 1515, KXAN reported.
“I should have the right to introduce my daughter to the concept of adultery and coveting one’s spouse, it shouldn’t be one of the first things she reads in her kindergarten classroom,” Litzler, the commission’s public policy director, said in the report.
Dr. Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston, told KXAN that the Ten Commandments legislation is an example of Republican identity politics.
“Just as we have identity politics in the Democratic Party that tends to revolve around ethnicity, race, gender and sexual orientation, on the Republican side, we’re seeing identity politics related to religion and going back to reinforce the Judeo-Christian origins of the United States,” Jones said.
