The county in far eastern Oklahoma approved the original request, made by former Poteau mayor Don Barnes, in April 2009. The plan was scrapped a couple months later when a federal appeals court ruled that a similar monument, at Haskell County’s courthouse in nearby Stigler, amounted to a government endorsement of religion. Proponents of the Stigler monument, and of religious-themed government lawn ornaments in general, were not pleased.
The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution sure does make some people mad.
Like, they love that monument. You might even say they worship it. And why not raise up a standing image of stone? If there’s some sort of biblical set of rules prohibiting such a thing, we haven’t heard of it.
