Ten Commandments weighed in the balance
A county judge is taking on the ACLU . . . and seems to be winning
From, The Kentucky Citizen Digest, May/June, 2001.

To McCreary County Judge-Executive Jimmie Greene, the Ten Commandments is a family issue.

Greene provoked controversy and gained national attention by posting the Ten Commandments on the walls of the McCreary County Courthouse, even in the face of a court order to take them down.  “When they originally tried to bring suit to take the Commandments down,” Greene said, “There were only two people the ACLU could find to oppose it -- and one of them was my cousin!”

After suit was filed by the ACLU last year, U. S. District Judge Jennifer B. Coffman issued an order declaring that Ten Commandments displays in both the McCreary and Pulaski County Courthouses were unconstitutional.  But Greene, a World War II veteran is not used to being pushed around.

Instead of taking them down, Greene placed the Ten Commandments among a number of other American historical documents and continued the display.

In late March the court ordered that opposing attorneys try to negotiate some kind of agreement on a display that both sides could live with.  The court’s action angered the liberal mavens at the state’s second largest newspaper.  “How do you negotiate constitutionality?” huffed the Lexington Herald-Leader’s editorial board.

Herschel Walker is a McCreary County pastor who has vigorously supported Greene’s efforts.  “Jimmy didn’t do anything wrong,” Walker said.  “He put up some historical documents is what he did.”

Both Greene and Walker stress that the Ten Commandments is both a religious and historical document.  “The Ten Commandments are God’s formula for an orderly society,” Walker said.   Greene also pointed out that the Ten Commandments are common to all three of the world’s major religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

“America was based on Christianity,” Greene told the Louisville Courier-Journal. “I respect other religions, but historically they had nothing to do with the founding of America.”

Walker underscored the historical importance of the commandments by quoting Woodrow Wilson: “A nation that does not know what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today,” he said.

Greene obviously relishes his role as the challenger to the system on the issue of religion and public life, and talks of the issue with homespun humor.

Speaking of his cousin who is his legal opponent in the ACLU lawsuit, Greene said, “her mother and father are my Aunt and Uncle, who happen to be buried in a little plot on the family property.  I went out there the other day to visit them , ‘cause I thought they might be rolling over in their graves!”
 
 

Key Family Foundation Contacts: Kent Ostrander, Executive Director Martin Cothran, Senior Associate Policy Analyst