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Well, that depends on which Ten Commandments you want to display. . .See, the only section of the Bible that is actually directly called the Ten Commandments (aseret ha-dvarîm) in the text itself is the section that describes Moses making two new stone tablets, after he smashed the first ones. That’s Exodus 34:10–27—sometimes called the Ritual Decalogue. And these Ten Commandments go like this (NIV translation; somewhat edited for clarity):(1) Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land where you are going.(2) Do not make any idols.(3) Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread [Pesach or Passover]. For seven days eat bread made without yeast, as I commanded you.(4) The first offspring of every womb belongs to me, including all the firstborn males of your livestock, whether from herd or flock.(5) Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even during the plowing season and harvest you must rest.(6) Celebrate the Festival of Weeks [Shavuot] with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Festival of Ingathering [Sukkot] at the turn of the year.(7) Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast,(8) and do not let any of the sacrifice from the Passover Festival remain until morning.(9) Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the Lord your God.(10) Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.So we could put these on a monument in front of a courthouse or state capital—these have as much Biblical justification as anything to be called the Ten Commandments. But this has never caught on. Your average litigant or lawmaker in the US probably doesn’t need to be reminded that he must not offer sacrificial blood and yeast bread together in the same sacrifice.What most people have in mind is sometimes called the Ethical Decalogue. These are the laws that were allegedly spoken by Yahweh to Moses and the Israelites (Exodus 20), before Moses went up on Mt. Sinai and got laws written on the first set of stone tablets (Exodus 31), which Yahweh personally made and wrote, and which Moses later smashed. (That’s an often overlooked point; the Ethical Decalogue appears before the stone tablets were made. We’re not directly told what was on the stone tablets, except that it was the “covenant law”, written on both sides.)Only two of the Ritual Decalogue commandments overlap with the Ethical Decalogue (do not make idols; keep the Sabbath). The Ethical Decalogue actually appears twice (Exodus 20:1–17 and Deuteronomy 5:4–21), with slightly different wording. (Deuteronomy 4:13 uses the phrase “Ten Commandments” again, but to my eyes it’s not clear which set of ten is being referred to.)OK, so we’re going to put up the Ethical Decalogue on every courthouse lawn, right?Well. . . The problem is that the text does not actually include those convenient Roman numerals, I through X. Different commentators—and different Christian denominations—have different ways of dividing up the text into ten. (Alan Dershowitz pointed out that if every single thing you’re commanded to do were to be taken as a Commandment, there would be nineteen Commandments, not ten. So somehow we have to group the nineteen into ten, and it’s not 100% obvious how to do this. . .)Reformed Christians (Presbyterians and such) usually follow John Calvin’s division, which follows the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures). They divide up the last commandments this way—and as best I recall, the Methodists among whom I was raised follow this division as well:9. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. You shall not set your desire on your neighbor’s house or land, his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.But Catholics follow Augustine’s interpretation, and they divide up the same text like this:8. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.9. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.10. You shall not set your desire on your neighbor’s house or land, his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.And Lutherans use a different ordering, closer to Exodus 20 than Deuteronomy 5:8. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.9. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house.10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.Meanwhile, the Septuagint, and the Reformed tradition, divvy up the other end like so:1. You shall have no other gods before me.2. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. . . .3. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.But the Catholics add the “prologue” to the First Commandment, which the others don’t consider part of the commandments proper; and they divvy the text up like this:1. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. . .2.You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.So there is no universal, non-denominational way to number the Ten Commandments. (And I haven’t even mentioned the Jewish tradition in the Talmud, which is different from both Catholic and Lutheran and Reformed / Septuagint traditions.)Here’s the Oklahoma state capitol monument:It actually follows Exodus 20, divided the way the Lutherans do it: #8 is “Thou shalt not bear false witness”, #9 is “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house”, and #10 is “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his ass, etc.” But the Ten Commandments monument that Judge Roy Moore installed in the Alabama judicial building in 2001, which kind of started the fad for commandment monuments, looks like this:You see it goes Reformed / Septuagint, with all the coveting clustered into the Tenth commandment. Plus it splits up “thou shalt have no other gods” and “thou shalt not make a graven image”, which the Oklahoma monument grouped together.Finally, the Catholic church in my home town has a monument on its property (which, be it said, they have every right to have). I took a picture of it this afternoon—and theirs follows Catholic tradition, with yet a different grouping, with #9 banning coveting thy neighbor’s wife and #10 banning coveting thy neighbor’s goods. (I guess this is sort of progressive—at least they’re not lumping the wife in with the rest of the household goods.)If you’re still reading, you’re probably saying, “Look, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that people follow the commandment that says ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ It doesn’t matter whether that commandment is #5 (Catholics), #6 (Reformed), or #7 (Philo of Alexandria), right?”Perhaps not. But any courthouse monument with the Ten Commandments / Ethical Decalogue on it is inevitably going to endorse one religious denomination or another—because it can’t follow them all at the same time. If the government pays for the monument, they get to decide whose interpretation is presented, and whose interpretation is not. Some Christian denomination is going to get left out—and some denomination will be implicitly endorsed.It doesn’t matter if you insist that “America is a Christian nation!” and come up with a way to exclude the Satanists, Ásatrúar, Sikhs, Taoists, Humanists, Pastafarians, etc. etc. Eventually the Presbyterians, or the Catholics, or the Lutherans, are going to notice that their courthouse monument doesn’t match up with what they were taught in their own churches or Sunday Schools or catechism. Someone will get angry over the fact that the courthouse monument is presenting a Catholic interpretation, or a Protestant one. Erecting a Ten Commandments monument on government property amounts to government endorsement of some Christians over others. The government essentially gets to decide which Christian tradition is right, and which ones are wrong. That is not a precedent I want the government to set.Anyone who thinks that this is totally not a big deal is advised to read some European history. Terrible wars were fought all through the 1500s and 1600s over whose theology was wrong or right. Geoffrey Widdison has already quoted John Adams: “The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.”John Adams knew well whereof he spoke—plenty of people had come to America for the express purpose of getting away from those wars. May I humbly suggest that trying to reignite them would just be a bad idea.

I am a labor and delivery nurse. In the 30 years that I worked at the bedside, I only saw a few babies with ambiguous genitalia or who were actual identifiable hermaphrodites. I saw the great range of decisions that were required. Some needed immediate surgeries. Some would require decisions made by the parents later in life. I have never known any of them later.I have, however, taken care of an adult with this condition. It was one of the most difficult and confusing patients I have ever dealt with. Let me tell the story.I was working for a short time in a small hospital in southern Oklahoma. It was a very understaffed small hospital and this was about 30 years ago. Only one nurse worked on the OB floor at night. One nurse for all the mommies, babies, and any hospitalized antepartum patients who were having problems.Most of the time, it was hard but doable. We rarely had more than 3 moms and babies but there were exceptions.One night, I had a floor full. There were moms, babies and a girl in labor. Then I got a call from the ER. They had a woman in active labor and were bringing her right back with delivery imminent. I raced over and got a delivery room ready and met them a couple of minutes later. They bring in this girl who was writing in pain and crying. She was alone and terrified. She was tall and thin and her stomach was large but she didn’t look term. I tried to get a baby’s heartbeat and nothing felt right. I also didn’t hear any heartbeat. I told her, “I am going to need to examine you.” She started crying and said, “You can’t!” I said, “Why not?” She just kept saying, “You can’t!” I ripped off the glove and said, “Oh, you think about it. I have to check the patient next door and I will be right back.”I ran next door. Luckily that patient was doing fine and didn’t need any assistance.I got back to this patient. She reached out and was crying and said, “You don’t understand. You can’t check me. I have both parts.” Both parts? What the hell is she talking about? Then it struck me. She has male and female genitalia and didn’t want me to see. I immediately saw that this was one of those cases where labor and delivery skills probably weren’t the care she needed. She did tell me who her doctor was so I called her doctor. He was a family practice doctor who worked there and had been there for many years. I told him the patient’s name and he said, “What the hell is ….. (he called her by her first name, because he knew her so well) doing in L&D?” I explained to him what the problem was and I told him that the stomach was obviously enlarged but did not look at all like a pregnant belly and I couldn’t palpate anything much less get heart tones. He said he would be there in a few minutes but he wanted me to get an abdominal xray. The patient had calmed down a lot and the xray tech arrived and did a quick xray. I thought this was odd but I was really so busy that I couldn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. I just knew she was stable and I ran around quickly making sure my other patients were settled in and doing ok. I saw the xray film and almost passed out, myself. The patient’s abdomen was distended because her intestines were extremely distended with huge gas pockets.The doctor got there, glanced at the xray and said, “Well, now you know …” He then told me that this patient was born with male genitalia but in an exam when the patient was 13, it was discovered that the testicles had never distended and the doctor couldn’t even palpate them. The patient had not been taken to pediatricians regularly as a child and so this had never been discovered. They ordered some tests and discovered that the patient had a fully formed uterus and ovaries that had never developed beyond infantile stage. While the patient had a penis, it was very small. There was a complete vaginal opening, too.The patient did not have parents who handled it well at all. (No big surprise since they had only taken their child to the doctor when they had a cold or something and had never done normal checkups.) They were very blunt and told their “son” that he was deformed and that he had “both parts” and he would never grow into a man. This happened at about 13 years of age. This, in my opinion, is already the hardest time in a child’s life. To say that it blew his world off its foundation is an understatement. From that point on, the child decided that she was probably really a woman. Her “pregnancy” was purely a figment of her imagination, a false pregnancy, and her body went along with it by backing up gas to form the distention.The doctor went in to talk to her. He explained to her that she was not pregnant and could not get pregnant. He was very kind and gentle with her. He calmed her down and asked if he could call someone to pick her up. She said he could call her aunt. (She no longer had any relationship with her parents.)He had been taking care of this patient for over ten years. The family wouldn’t seek any kind of counseling for her or even look into any other kinds of medical treatment that could help with some of the hormones. The family was ashamed and practically just threw her away. The poor girl was so mixed up and never had a chance to get the care she needed.To this day, it is still one of the saddest things I have seen. Her life could have been so much better if she had at least received some kind of guidance in how to deal with this. She had no one to talk to about it except this doctor who only got to see her once in a while if she showed up in his office for something.

I don't think it's either case. The appeal of the death penalty is in vengeance and retribution. It has an "eye for an eye" quality that other forms of punishment lack.The system is set so that it's difficult or impossible to determine if an innocent person was executed. An appeal for DNA testing on a convict who has already been executed will be denied. The courts in DP states view this determination as having no benefit, since the accused can't be brought back to life and restored. Given the number of people waiting on death row who have been exonerated and released, it seems almost certain that someone (probably a lot of someones) has been executed for crimes they didn't do.Prisons serve multiple benefits to the mainstream public. One is "out of sight, out of mind." Once the prisoner is shackled and hauled off to prison, you usually never hear anything about them again. You don't know if they're being victimized, starved, denied medical attention, or held incommunicado. You just know they won't be bothering you again. There might be a minor dust-up when they finally get the needle, but those events are quickly forgotten, too. Just about everyone who was sentient in the mid-1990s knew that Timothy McVeigh blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City, but most will draw a blank if you ask, "Where is he now?" He was executed in federal prison in June 2001.There is something of a general assumption that anyone convicted of a crime deserves to be punished. If that person is found innocent of the charges, then he must have done something else that he deserved prison for. It's easy to make a case like that, as most people convicted of major felonies had convictions of lesser crimes in their past.When I taught criminal justice, most of my students were political conservatives who wanted to be cops. If I took a poll on whether we should have a death penalty, the response would be overwhelmingly in favor of it. If asked whether prison life should be harder and more punitive than it already is, they would also express they favor for this.I'd then ask, "What if it's you?" or someone they loved. I'd point out that most of us have committed a felony or come very close to it at some point in our lives, even if was only a technical one. The night you drove home after drinking too much, no child ran out in front of your car. No one found out about your assignations with your underage girl/boyfriend. You experimentation with illegal drugs was never discovered. Some people have a bad turn of luck and get caught the first time they do such a thing, and they carry that criminal label for life.I think some of them briefly reconsidered their position on crime and punishment, but most have been too well socialized and went back to the party line. They think how they have been conditioned to think.