Assclown Alert is a column of opinion, analysis and snark.
The Texas Senate appears close to passing a bill requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom, a proposal all but sure to ignite a court fight because it violates the constitutionally enshrined separation of church and state.
Senate Bill 10, authored by Texas Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, would require elementary and secondary schools to display framed posters of the Ten Commandments in sufficiently large type so that they can be read from anywhere in the classroom in which they’re hung. All 20 Republicans in the upper chamber signed on as co-sponsors.
SB 10 amounts to a bid by King and his cronies to overturn the 1980 Stone v. Graham Supreme Court ruling, which said displaying the Ten Commandments in public schools violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Saying the quiet part out loud, King is crossing his fingers that the high court’s current conservative supermajority is willing to reverse earlier rulings about keeping Biblical teachings out of public education.
“Some judge will issue an injunction, and then hopefully it’ll work its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court and that bad law of Stone v. Graham will be overturned,” King explained on the Senate floor, the Dallas Morning News reports.
It’s questionable whether even the remade Supreme Court is willing to go that far when it comes to tearing down long-established legal precedent. But what’s not open to question is just how shitty King’s idea is.
San Antonio Democrat Sen. José Menéndez, for example, questioned whether it makes sense for elementary school teachers to be forced to discuss the concept of “adultery” or what it means to covet a “manservant,” according to the Morning News.
Meanwhile, Cameron Samuels, executive director of the nonprofit Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, pointed out just how laughably out-of-touch King is with actual threats faced by the state’s school kids.
“Amending this bill to require the Ten Commandments be made of bulletproof kevlar may actually be useful as a shield from gun violence, a real problem Texans face,” Samuels said, according to the Morning News.
This is at least the second attempt by King to force Christianity down students’ throats. He filed a similar Ten Commandments bill in 2023 — one that thankfully died in the Texas House.
King’s latest proposal is just as boneheaded.
If this assclown really wants to help children, maybe he should take note of the recently released 2024 Texas Kids Count report, which ranked the state near the bottom in multiple child well-being indicators, including health and economic security. Texas still has the highest rate of uninsured children, for example, and 400,000 minors eligible for Medicaid aren’t enrolled in the program.
Last we checked, posters of the Ten Commandments don’t put food in impoverished kids’ stomachs, keep them safe in their classrooms or give them needed access to medical care.
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Texas will require public school classrooms to display Ten Commandments under bill nearing passage
This article appears in Mar 5-18, 2025.
