Louisiana Forces Public School Classrooms to Display the Ten Commandments

Gov. Jeff Landry could use a little refresher on the commandments, himself.

My friend and former colleague John Stanton, who edits The Gambit in the New Orleans, has a stunning and infuriating piece out for Juneteenth today showing that white household incomes in the city ($185K/year on avg.) are 13x higher than Black household incomes ($14K/year on avg.), despite New Orleans historically running on and heavily profiting from Black labor. One might think Louisiana’s elected officials would consider doing something about that—and maybe also address the state’s dismal maternal mortality rate, failing education system, and worst crime rate in the country. Instead, Gov. Jeff Landry signed a bill into law on Wednesday that requires all public school classrooms from elementary school on up to display the Ten Commandments prominently and in a “large, easily readable font,” despite the Constitution pretty clearly requiring the separation of church and state.

As an attorney, Landry well knows that this new law violates the religious freedom of non-Christians and nonbelievers alike, who certainly don’t send their kids to public schools to be confronted every day with a list of things somebody else’s god allegedly said between the 16th and 13th centuries BCE. But supporters of the bill say the Bible is a “historic text” as much as a religious one, so there’s no problem forcing taxpayer-funded schools to display it. “I can’t wait to be sued,” Landry said at a Republican fundraiser in Nashville this weekend, per The Tennessean. (Let’s get that going.)

While signing the bill today, Landry added, “If you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original law giver, which was Moses.” On that note, let’s take a look at all the ways Jeff Landry violates the Ten Commandments—namely “Thou Shalt Not Kill” and “Thou Shalt Not Steal”—via a brief summary of his policies in a Current Affairs story titled, “Is Jeff Landry the Worst Governor in America?”:

He’s a climate change denier and a loyal ally to the fossil fuel industry, which has poisoned Louisiana’s majority-Black neighborhoods along the stretch of the Mississippi River known as “Cancer Alley.” He’s also appointed former oil, gas, and coal executives to several important environmental positions within his administration. (Keep in mind, Louisiana has been hit especially hard by climate-related disasters like hurricanes, so this is a direct threat to his constituents’ safety!) As a state representative and later Louisiana’s attorney general, he went out of his way to oppose LGBTQ rights on numerous occasions, and has even been condemned by his own brother (who’s gay) for his homophobic politics. He’s trying to dismantle and privatize the Louisiana education system, promoting so-called “education savings accounts” that allow public money to be spent on private school tuition. He wants censorship in public libraries, and may soon sign a bill to require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools. He praised the recent brutal police crackdown on students protesting for Palestine at Tulane University….

When Landry’s laws throw 17-year-olds into adult prisons, or lock up people whose only crime was to stand too close to the police, the conditions they’ll be forced to live under are truly sickening to contemplate. Many will, no doubt, be sent to “Angola”—the colloquial name for the Louisiana State Penitentiary, which was built on the site of a former slave plantation. (Sometimes the analogy between cops and slave-catching patrols makes itself.) Angola is one of the most notorious prisons in the United States, and for good reason. Most of its cells do not have air conditioning, and prisoners report that they “barely can breathe” when temperatures climb above 100—something that happens frequently in a Louisiana summer. When they’re not sweltering in a hot concrete-and-metal cage, prisoners are often forced to work on the “farm line,” a multi-acre agricultural operation where they grow, weed, and pick crops by hand for as little as 2 cents an hour in pay. 

I’ll add to this list a piece Lorena O’Neil wrote for Jezebel on Landry withholding critical flood response funds from New Orleans because the city refused to enforce his total abortion ban. Let people die in hurricanes if they won’t force teenagers to carry their rapists’ babies to term, says Jeff! A true man of the Bible.

In other news…

-Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Congress’ most obnoxious frat boy who recently said women who support abortion rights are too ugly to need abortions, appears to be in very deep shit over drug use, sex trafficking, paying women for sex, showing nudes to his friends on the House Floor, and trying to impede investigations into himself

-Mitt Romney just came out and said he can’t vote for Trump because Trump’s a rapist

-Paul Pressler, a serial child rapist and one of the architects of the "conservative resurgence" in the Southern Baptist Convention that made it insane (per Matt Sheffield), is dead

-Justin Timberlake’s mug shot for drunk driving suggests jails in the Hamptons use ring lights for mug shots?! Need to go get some head shots done there for free, ASAP

That’s all for today, folks.