As roughly two dozen Texas families fight to keep the Ten Commandments off public school walls, one Austin-area mom is making no apologies for wanting them in her kindergartner's classroom. Brittany McFarland, a Christian mother whose 5-year-old daughter attends public school in Texas, told Fox News Digital she was "pleasantly surprised" by the new classroom displays and said the fierce backlash over them reflects a much bigger battle over faith, values and religious liberty in America's public schools. "I feel like our country, we've been kind of forced to erase religion and discussion of religion in schools in general," McFarland said.
"Almost to the point where the topic is taboo, and our children are afraid and uncomfortable to mention their faith or talk anything about it." McFarland said she and her husband had weighed whether public school was still the right choice for their daughter, but said learning about the Ten Commandments law gave her a "sense of hope" about the direction of public education. TEXAS DEM JAMES TALARICO RIPS 'UN-CHRISTIAN' COURT DECISION ON WHAT'S ALLOWED IN CLASSROOMS "It gave me a renewed sense of hope in our school systems," she said. The fight is straightforward.
Texas requires public schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms, and roughly two dozen families want the Supreme Court to block the law. The families, represented by groups including the ACLU, argue the state is crossing a constitutional line by putting a religious text in public school classrooms. They say decisions about a child's religious upbringing should be left to parents and faith communities, not the government, and warn the displays could make students from other religious or nonreligious backgrounds feel excluded or pressured.
TED CRUZ, CONSERVATIVES RESPOND AFTER TALARICO CRITICIZES BIBLE-RELATED EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS AS 'PROPAGANDA' Texas has defended the law, and a federal appeals court upheld it, reasoning that students are not required to recite the Ten Commandments, believe them or affirm their religious origins. Now the families are asking the Supreme Court to step in. The justices have not yet agreed to hear the case.
If they do, the dispute could become a major test of how the First Amendment applies to religious expression in public schools. McFarland rejects the characterization that simply displaying the Ten Commandments amounts to imposing Christianity on students. "I look at the Ten Commandments as a reminder to do the right thing," she told Fox News Digital.
"They're good standards for children to be exposed to." McFarland pointed to commandments against stealing and the instruction to honor one's father and mother as examples of principles she believes have value for children. "These are things that we should be talking about in our homes and in our classrooms," she said. McFarland also stressed that, based on what she has seen in her daughter's classroom and others, the Ten Commandments are not being presented as something students must recite or affirm.
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