Ten Commandments caravan arrives at U.S. Supreme Court

WASHINGTON -- Protesters seeking the return of a Ten Commandments monument to an Alabama courthouse concluded their East Coast caravan Monday on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, where a mural of the tablets is displayed inside.

Several hundred people knelt during a musical rendition of the Lord's Prayer as organizers combined religious meditation with a call for legislative and judicial action.

"They are sick and tired of a federal judiciary shoving a radical secularism down our throats," said the Rev. Rob Schenck, president of the Washington-based National Clergy Council.

Schenck helped lead protests last month at the Alabama Judicial Building in Montgomery, where Chief Justice Roy Moore installed a Ten Commandments monument in the rotunda in 2001. A federal judge ruled that the 5,300-pound marker and its placement violated the Constitution's ban against government promotion of a religious doctrine.

Moore was suspended on judicial ethics charges for refusing to obey the order to move the monument, which was later put in a storage room at the directive of the eight associate justices. The caravan left Montgomery Sept. 28, stopping for rallies in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia before arriving in Washington, D.C., seeking signatures on petitions urging the high court to rule in favor of the monument's public display in a government building.

Moore has asked the Supreme Court to overturn the lower court order, but the Supreme Court has not said yet if it will hear the case.

Rally organizers said Monday more than 384,000 petitions have been signed, at last count.

Thirteen boxes containing the petitions provided a backdrop for the morning news conference, and oversized models of the Ten Commandments loomed over the crowd during the rally.

One man, wearing a crown and a sandwich sign that read "Stop Judicial Tyranny," walked the crowd with the help of stilts that made him appear more than 10 feet tall.

There were balloons and T-shirts listing all the commandments, and six plastic foam tombstones featured the names of Roe vs. Wade and other court cases -- a representation of what a Rochester, N.Y., group contends is the death of religious liberty.

On Sunday morning, six protesters -- including one of the organizers, the Rev. Patrick Mahoney -- were arrested outside the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, where some Supreme Court justices were attending Mass.

Mahoney said there were about 150 demonstrators who had a permit to be there, but U.S. marshals demanded they not hold signs on the sidewalk. Mahoney and others displayed signs anyway and were put into handcuffs. The others paid a $25 fine and were released, but Mahoney opted for a court date, which was set for Oct. 20. He said he is considering a lawsuit against the marshals.

"This is the kind of climate we are seeing over the last two years," he said. "We are seeing an erosion and crushing of demonstrators, whatever their particular ideology is."

Wahoo McDaniels, an evangelist from Citronelle, Ala., was decked out in a white sports coat with a red embroidered patch in the shape of the state of Alabama on the lapel. McDaniels said the caravan is important to wake up the American people, most of whom he says support the cause but don't realize how much the federal courts are restricting their religious freedoms.

"They're asleep, they're slumbering, and they need to be awakened to what's going on," McDaniels said.

"From Montgomery, a grassfire has started and we want our legislators and this judicial system to hear 'enough is enough,"' said Rev. Michael Rippy, a Montgomery pastor.

But Rob Boston, a spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called the rally a "public relations stunt" and said Moore should be nobody's role model.

"The people who are rallying around this judge should realize he stands for flagrantly violating the rule of law," Boston said. "That's a recipe for anarchy and chaos in our society. This is not a guy who should be made out to be a hero."