LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Workers have installed a Ten Commandments monument outside Arkansas’ Capitol, two years after lawmakers approved a measure permitting the statue on state grounds.
The 6-foot-tall (1.8-meter-tall) monument was placed on the Capitol grounds early Tuesday. Opponents of the monument have said it amounts to an unconstitutional endorsement of religion and have threatened to sue.
Plans for Arkansas’ monument sparked a push by the Satanic Temple for a competing statue of Baphomet, a goat-headed, angel-winged creature accompanied by two children smiling at it. Efforts to install that display, however, were blocked by a law enacted this year requiring legislative approval before the commission could consider a monument proposal.
Arkansas’ monument is a replica of a display at the Texas Capitol that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005.
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The Mississippi Free Press produced this story through the MFP Solutions Lab, supported by the Solutions Journalism Network. This series digs into Mississippi’s systemic issues and sheds light on responses to them in other communities. Beyond just reporting on problems, these stories interrogate their causes and inspect potential solutions.
