Senate passes bill to allow schools to display Ten Commandments in classrooms

The Ohio Senate passed a bill that would allow the display of the Ten Commandments and other documents in public school classrooms.

“It is inexcusable that more focus has not been shown towards these historic texts,” state Sen. Terry Johnson, R-McDermott, said, according to the Ohio Capitol Journal.

Among other documents proposed in Senate Bill 34 were the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Articles of Confederation, the mottoes of both the U.S. and Ohio, the Magna Carta, the Mayflower Compact and the Northwest Ordinance.

“This bill will expose our students to the documents which have, in America, served as the backbone of our legal and moral traditions,” Johnson said. “This legislation intends to reintroduce disciplined historic principles — those same principles upon which our Founding Fathers drew inspiration and put to writing — back to the classroom.”

The bill is now headed to the House for further consideration.
Even though the bill said Ohio school districts could choose only four of the nine listed documents, Democrats still argued it’s a mandate because the government would be requiring schools to display the documents.

“Did you notice that little piece in there — if someone gives [documents], if someone donates them, that they need to then display them?” State Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood, said, according to the news source.

Antonio, a former educator, said it’s unconstitutional to put religious texts in public school classrooms.

“To present to those children that a document from a religious practice is above all others is inappropriate,” Antonio said. ”It’s not what the founders intended, it goes totally against the separation of church and state, and I think it’s an abomination.”

State Sen. Andrew Brenner, R-Delaware, previously advocated for the bill, claiming that the Ten Commandments are historically significant to Americans and tied to the foundation of this country.

“The actual Ten Commandments are not found in our Constitution, but the principles of many of our founders came from a biblical understanding that all of our rights come from God,” he said. “A lot of these are coming from a biblical basis, and that is what our society and our country and our state is based on.”

The Ohio House also recently passed another Christianity-related bill – House Bill 486 – that is supposed to allow educators at the state’s public schools and colleges to discuss the positive impacts of religion – Christianity, specifically – on the United States.

The bill was named after a conservative and Christian activist and founder of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk, who was murdered on Sept. 10 in Utah.