The Casper City Council is trying to take the middle road regarding its own Ten Commandments monument and a proposed Fred Phelps monument condemning Matthew Shepherd to hell.
Bully for them for standing up to Phelps, though he and his kin are more than willing to back up their threats with law suits. The council seems to be planning to create a new public plaza of historic legal documents, which would include not only the Decalogue, but also the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and other documents. Whether this will (or should) withstand scrutiny is debatable (and will, no doubt, be debated in court).
I’m mixed on this one. On the one hand, anything that pokes Phelps and his cult of hatred in the eye is prima facie a good thing. On the other hand, I’m not a supporter of the Ten Commandments as public decor, certainly not in a vacuum, and questionably in the context of other founding legal documents.
But I’ll recommend the ACLU stay out of this one for the moment. Let Phelps spend his money on legal maneuvers; maybe it will keep him out of other peoples’ hair.