Ten Commandments get an Indiana niche

BEDFORD, Ind. -- Janie Blake and Mary Brewer sat at a table one recent morning outside a Subway restaurant in downtown Bedford, across from the Lawrence County Courthouse, enjoying cold drinks and cookies.

Facing them was a limestone monument with the Ten Commandments inscribed on one side. The two women said they liked the display under the restaurant's portico, but wished it could be where it had been intended: on the State House lawn in Indianapolis.

''It's stuck here in a cubbyhole," said Blake, who lives in nearby Mitchell. ''It's time America took a stand for what it was founded on."

The Ten Commandments monument in this southern Indiana community has been a focus of controversy since the US Supreme Court's rulings on June 27, allowing a Ten Commandments display in Texas to stand and requiring one in Kentucky to be removed.

Politicians have called for the Bedford monument to be moved next to the state Capitol, where an older monument stood for 33 years before it was removed in 1991 after it was vandalized. The Bedford monument, built to replace the one at the State House, has been in front of the Subway shop since the Indiana Civil Liberties Union won a series of cases in 2000 banning the monument from government property.

''From what I understand, it should be allowed in front of the State House now, because of the Supreme Court decision in the Texas case," said state Representative Jerry Denbo, a Democrat from French Lick, which is near Bedford. ''It represents the values we have here in Indiana."

Ken Falk, legal director of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union, said his organization will fight efforts to move it to the State House, because the advocates' motives are religious. The Supreme Court allowed the Texas Ten Commandments display to remain because it was designed to show the origins of the nation's legal system, not to promote a particular religion.

''The Ten Commandments are basically a holy and sacred document," Falk said. ''When it is put in a public space, an intense scrutiny has to be put on the purpose of it."

The Supreme Court's split decision has sparked controversies elsewhere. Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan and state lawmakers have been debating whether to install a Ten Commandments display at the Capitol. In Boise, Idaho, activists are pressing city officials to return to a city park a Ten Commandments monument that was removed last year after a legal challenge.

About 200 Ten Commandments displays are scattered across the United States, many of them gifts from the Fraternal Order of Eagles. Inspired by the 1956 movie ''The Ten Commandments" and backed by its director, Cecil B. DeMille, the Eagles tried to have the monuments put in front of public buildings and in parks across the country.

In the Texas decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the Ten Commandments display at the State House could stand because it did not have a religious intent. A gift from the Eagles in 1961, the Texas monument sits amid 16 others, most of them for war veterans.

In the Kentucky case, justices ruled against the courthouse display because they had found that it promoted a religious viewpoint. Proponents of the Kentucky monument added other features -- references from other historical documents -- only after they had lost in the lower courts.

Some legal observers have predicted that the high court's rulings would mean more cases in the lower courts.

''We have two truly conflicting cases," said Jan LaRue, chief counsel for Concerned Women of America, a group that supports the displays. ''The tragedy is it will create more conflict in the district courts, and more litigation."

Jim Cormehls, a law and public policy professor at the School of Urban and Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Arlington, predicted that the Supreme Court rulings would mean more political clashes. ''I think you might see groups try to work through the legislatures," Cormehls said. ''You might see them try to get something through Congress."

In Indiana, there is movement on legal and political fronts. Governor Mitch Daniels wants the Bedford monument moved to the State House and has instructed his legal office to study the matter, according to his spokeswoman.

State Representative Denbo and state Senator Brent Steele, a Bedford Republican, have urged that the monument be moved, and have offered to work with the governor to accomplish it.

The first Ten Commandments monument at the Indiana State House was a gift from the Eagles. After vandals smashed it, the monument was removed and placed in storage. About three years ago, it was repaired and placed in front of an Eagles Lodge in Anderson, Ind. Last year, it was destroyed in an apparent act of vandalism. Authorities believe someone drove a car into it.

About six years ago, Steele worked with local companies in Lawrence County, ''the limestone capital of the world," to have a new Ten Commandments monument built and donated to the state. Besides the Ten Commandments, the monument includes the Bill of Rights and the preamble to the Indiana Constitution.

When then-governor Frank O'Bannon announced that he would install the new monument at the State House, the Indiana Civil Liberties Union went to federal court and got an injunction blocking the move. The monument was then taken to the grounds of the Lawrence County Courthouse, where it stayed for a few days before the ICLU got another court order to remove it.

It was in storage until the owner of the Subway sandwich shop across from the courthouse, who was rebuilding after a fire, agreed to put it in front of the store.

Steele said the monument belongs at the State House, where it would be reinstalled on the grounds amid other monuments, including a statue of George Washington, a bust of Christopher Columbus donated by the Knights of Columbus, and a post-9/11 quote from President Bush.

But Steele said it serves a purpose where it is.

''I watch kids come out of the Subway and sit on it and eat," Steele said. ''There are scuff marks on it, but that's OK. Some kids read it, and it might be the first time they read the Ten Commandments or the Bill of Rights."

Robert Preer can be reached at preer@globe.com.