Religion
Alabama Ten Commandments monument is gone, not forgotten

By Roy Hoffman
Religion News Service

	DAVE MARTIN / AP Montgomery County, Ala., Sheriff's deputies remove a protester from the rotunda of the Supreme Court building last summer, during the height of the controversy over the fate of a Ten Commandments monument, which was ultimately removed.
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In the rotunda of the state Supreme Court building, behind the U.S. and Alabama flags, the floor shows only vague scuff marks where the monument once stood. But even in its absence, the Ten Commandments has a presence.

Tourism, said Willie James, a courthouse marshal, has gone up since the controversy over former Chief Justice Roy Moore's monument became national news last summer. "Visitors always ask, 'Where are the Ten Commandments? Can we see them?' " James said.

The response is that the 2.5-ton monument is locked away in a room, the private property of Moore, and, under court order, off-limits to the public.

The nine members of the Alabama Court of the Judiciary unanimously declared that Moore, the court's chief justice, had violated the state's Canons of Judicial Ethics and brought "disrepute" when he refused to remove the monument from public view as ordered by U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson.

'I keep the lights on it'

The room in which the monument is stored is reachable through a door locked to all except people such as James and the building's manager, Graham George Jr., a retired U.S. Army colonel and former Vietnam War battalion commander.

It was George, following court instructions, who presided over the removal of the monument Aug. 27.

George had contracted with a mover, who got the monument up off the ground and rolled it to the storage room, where the door had to be sawed an inch and a half wider to get it through. It sits there, he said, but not in the dark. "I keep the lights on it."

A similar controversy is developing in Washington state, where a granite monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments has been installed at the Everett Police Department. An Everett resident, claiming the monument violates separation of church and state, has filed a lawsuit in federal court asking that the monument be declared unconstitutional and removed from city property. While the monument has supporters and detractors, it doesn't appear to be the hot issue it is in Alabama.

There, Steve Kukla, 53, wearing a jersey with a silk-screened image of the Ten Commandments, paces in the Supreme Court building rotunda, looking at the where the stone used to sit.

Kukla and his wife, Bonnie, are singing evangelists who live in Tulsa, Okla. They were driving from Louisiana to Atlanta when they decided to stop and pay homage to the Ten Commandments.

"We came specifically to see where the monument was," Steve Kukla said. "It's a solemn feeling," his wife added.

They take photos of each other near the flags; they look around at the empty spaces. They see a bronze copy of The Bill of Rights near the foyer.

"It's like visiting a graveyard, a graveyard of the moral absolute this country once stood for," Steve Kukla said.

Another group enters, a threesome visiting Montgomery from Savannah, Ga. Among them is Tony Foley, a lawyer who said he wanted to see where the monument was because of his interest in the legal complexities of the issue — and because "I think they should put it back."

Foley and his friends look around, pause at the empty place near the flags and head back out the door.

	Roy Moore, owner of the Ten Commandments monument, is one of the few who have access to it.

Then, all is silent, a dramatic contrast to August, when satellite trucks crowded the street, supporters of Moore prayed on the steps and people wearing sandwich boards with the Ten Commandments printed on them took up their positions near the building's columns outside.

"There was one man who came until only recently, every morning about 7 a.m., and knelt on the courthouse steps," State Law Librarian Timothy Lewis said.

But that man is gone now, too, Lewis said.

In all of Lewis' years as law librarian for the court — 17 — he has never seen a commotion like the one that erupted over the monument. He remembers a boy of about 12 who stood outside his library window blowing a ram's horn. The horn, a religious symbol from the Old Testament, became popular among Ten Commandments supporters on the courthouse steps.

Lewis had to call marshals to chase away the boy and his distracting horn. When Lewis viewed security tapes, he saw the boy blow the horn and peek into the window to see if anybody had noticed.

Visitors have their say

For $6, Lewis will provide a video to anyone of "Court of the Judiciary, Case No. 33, In the Matter of Roy S. Moore."

At least 100 people, he said, have requested copies of the Alabama Court of the Judiciary proceedings of Nov. 12 and 13 that resulted in the ouster of Moore as chief justice. Someday, Lewis predicted, the courthouse corridors will contain an educational display about the controversy.

The law library keeps a register of visitors to the courthouse, and to flip through it is to catch a glimpse of the brief sentiments, pro and con, concerning the monument.

The comments, under "purpose of visit," built through the early part of 2003 and reached a crescendo in the summer.

A woman from New Hampshire: "May God bless the judge and the state of Al."

A man from Oregon: "Pray for our continued freedom under God."

A woman from Arizona: "Can not believe this monument still here!"

A woman from Alabama: "God bless the USA and Judge Moore."

A woman from Alabama: "God bless the ACLU."

A man from Alabama: "Roy Moore for president."

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company