The pitcher of the 10 commandments should not be taken down nor edited from Giles county school.

I don't think any of the terms in the resolution need time wasted on definitions, I did not make it complicated, its not vague, I trust we all understand what it specifically means to be Pro or Con to it.So let me just start with a link to bring up to speed my opponent and the readers of this debate on the current event controversies of my own home I like to call "Appalachia", the southwest Va part of Appalachia specifically. Needless to say the things affecting Giles County hit pretty close to home to me and others living in Pulaski County. http://bdtonline.com...http://retrieverman.wordpress.com...The ACLU has come in an decided to file a lawsuit against Giles County schools for having a pitcher of the 10 commandments displayed. The school board had taken them down in response but after a protest from practically ever parent and student and just all the other people that live in Giles County the school board decided to put the pitcher back up. Now the issue has been raised again with the approach of allowing the pitcher to stay up as long as the commandments that mention God are taken out, leaving just 6 commandments on display with other documents like the Declaration and the Constitution. http://www.roanoke.com...These are my defenses to support Giles County School boards choice to not take the pitcher of the 10 commandments down.Defense 1: It is indeed just a pitcher we are talking aboutBeing just a pitcher its not some state endorsement of a religion. Atheist students can in fact just walk by it and not be affected. The curriculum is not different. Your grades do not hinge on having faith of some kind in those 10 commandments, you don't get expelled for not proclaiming they come from a real god or the right god. It is at the end of the day just a decoration. Even if were displayed alone by itself it should not cause quarrel, after all elementary school have displayed up all over there walls all the time made up prissy sayings, chants, and codes for the children to read and maybe be inspired by. The 10 C are not that different from those there just much older.Defense 2 : They are displayed in ContextEven if we make the leap that somehow just an innocent pitcher can cause all by itself painfull persecution on your freedom of beliefs, as if somehow seeing it in the school reminded how your views are not considered mainstream and you have to take that as an insult weather its true or not. The fault is all on you for reading too much into that pitcher when you see it displayed in context with other historic documents. Its clearly just an artistic show of the history of “the Law” and the founding’s of the country and its influences.Defense 3: Editing does not make senseIt would not make sense to take out the first 4 commandments in the pitcher particularly given defense #2. It would no longer be of a historic document but just… a chunk of a document. The censorship would add no purpose to the display nor enrich it. this is just a theatrical suggestion by the ACLU to make a point. As long as were fighting for those why not instead display beside the 10 commandments a pitcher of Buddha, the Quran, the book of Mormon, Japanese Oni, and the Egyptian river god Tineel. Surely this would remove all suggestion of the “State” endorsing a religion and the ACLU would drop there lawsuit. But that wouldn’t occur because there lawsuit is not truly in the interest of making equal ground for people of different beliefs, they just want to assault the presence of anything explicitly Christian visible in public sight. If you have to edit the first 4 out you might as well take it completely down. Same would go if you just kept the first 4 commandments and displayed none of the more secular sounding ones. It removes the whole historic purpose of the display.Defense 4: Local Identity.One of the links just brushed this issue off like it was a distraction to the controversy but it should not be forgotten. There is outrage from the community on a very very large scale in Giles and outside of Giles over the notion of taking a pitcher down that they all love just because some people that don’t even live here have found out about it and don’t like. Its none of the ACLU’s business or Uncle Sam’s what the local school privately chooses to hang on his walls. All schools have some kind of displays or taxidermy that celebrate local cultural identity. If makes you uncomfortable to see that identity was chosen to take the form of a stuffed Cougar, well tough, its what your county chose. Maybe you got a vote or a rep or a chance to be a rep but at the end of the day you have to accept the whole of the public are not yours to boss around. If they are okay with the pitcher and even take pride in it, you really ought to just leave it be, and more importantly leave US be.