{"id":3585,"date":"2015-10-08T22:24:02","date_gmt":"2015-10-09T03:24:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/?p=3585"},"modified":"2015-10-08T22:28:55","modified_gmt":"2015-10-09T03:28:55","slug":"oklahoma-commandments-monument-timeline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/2015\/10\/08\/oklahoma-commandments-monument-timeline\/","title":{"rendered":"Oklahoma Commandments Monument Timeline"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"2015OK54-APPENDIX\"<\/a>
Photo courtesy of the Oklahoma Supreme Court<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now that the Ten Commandments have been moved to their new home, this seems like a propitious time to document the entire tale, from start to finish. What follows here is a brief and relatively concise timeline of the major events in the evolution of this bizarre and cautionary tale.<\/p>\n

06 Jan 2009\u00a0<\/strong>\u2013 Rep. Mike Ritze introduces HB 1330<\/a>, \u201cTen Commandments Monument Display Act\u201d in an effort to bring a new monument to the State Capitol. It later passes the House and Senate with large bipartisan majorities.<\/p>\n

11 May 2009<\/strong> \u2013 Americans United of Oklahoma implores Governor Brad Henry to veto the bill, providing a list of ten reasons<\/a> to reject it. Among these are “the eventuality of a lawsuit which the State of Oklahoma will most probably lose<\/i>.” (Not really a milestone, but hey, we told you so.)<\/p>\n

18 May 2009<\/strong> \u2013 Governor Henry signs HB 1330<\/a> into law, evidently fearing a veto override.<\/p>\n

01 Nov 2009<\/strong> \u2013 Ten Commandments Monument Display Act (O.S. \u00a7 74-4110<\/a>) takes effect.<\/p>\n

15 Nov 2012<\/strong> \u2013 Ten Commandments monument erected<\/a> upon the north steps of the State Capitol.<\/p>\n

19 Aug 2013<\/strong> \u2013 ACLU files suit<\/a> in state court. [PDF<\/a>]<\/p>\n

(Chas and I interviewed the lead plaintiff in this case for the Oklahoma Atheists Godcast<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

13 Jan 2014<\/strong> \u2013 American Atheists file suit<\/a> in federal court. [PDF<\/a>]<\/p>\n

(Brief post explaining and comparing these two different legal approaches here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

23 Oct 2014<\/b> \u2013 Michael Reed crashes his car into the monument<\/a>. (Adding blasphemy to injury, he also claims to have urinated thereupon.) Unsurprisingly, Reed is revealed to have a history of mental illness<\/a>. Somewhat more surprisingly, he self-identifies as a born again Christian and maintains that the devil made him do it<\/a>. Literally.<\/p>\n

(This event had no legal effect, but in practice it meant that the Capitol was missing a monument for a few months.)<\/p>\n

08 Jan 2015<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 A new monument is installed<\/a> to replace the one destroyed by Satan’s aforementioned minion.<\/p>\n

10 Mar 2015<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 American Atheists lawsuit dismissed on standing grounds<\/a>. (The plaintiff took this fairly personally, but it really wasn’t her fault.)<\/p>\n

30 Jun 2015<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 ACLU prevails<\/a> in the Oklahoma Supreme Court. The opinion published is per curiam<\/a>,\u00a0 terse and straightforward.<\/p>\n

07 Jul 2015<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Governor Mary Fallin makes stubborn noises<\/a> about having to answer to a separate branch of government, refuses to budge. She instructs the AG to try again, just in case the court wasn’t serious the first time.<\/p>\n

14 Jul 2015<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Attorney General Scott Pruitt files for rehearing<\/a>, arguing that “the Ten Commandments\u2026<\/span>have an undeniable secular purpose.” (I deny this.)<\/p>\n

27 Jul 2015<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Oklahoma Supreme Court smacks down AG Pruitt<\/a>, this time with a devastating barrage of substantive arguments. [Source<\/a>]<\/p>\n

28 Aug\u00a02015<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Oklahoma Interfaith Alliance and a coalition of other groups implore Governor Fallin<\/a> to remove the monument.<\/p>\n

11 Sep 2015<\/strong> \u2013 Oklahoma District Judge Thomas Prince orders the monument removed<\/a> within 30 days.<\/p>\n

06 Oct 2015<\/strong> \u2013 The monument is finally relocated<\/a> to private property, up the street, on loan. GOP lawmakers promise to bring it back<\/a> as soon as legislatively possible, after repealing a century old constitutional provision which provides for strict separation of church purposes and state property.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

This timeline will be updated periodically. Please let me know in the comments if I left off something which perhaps ought to be included.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that the Ten Commandments have been moved to their new home, this seems like a propitious time to document…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":3436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}