The Ten Commandments monument prompted a New York-based Satanist group to propose its own statue on the statehouse steps in Oklahoma.
Police said a vehicle plowed into the Ten Commandments monument near Oklahoma's capitol building at about 9pm on Oct. 23, 2014. The monument was smashed into pieces. The vehicle was abandoned after the incident and the Oklahoma Highway Patrol is investigating. The monument was replaced with an exact replica on Jan 8.
The U.S. Secret Service on Oct. 24, 2014 arrested 29-year-old Michael Reed Jr. after he made threatening comments at the Oklahoma City Federal Building about President Obama and said Satan told him to smash the monument. Reed also claimed he urinated on the monument before running it over.
The ACLU of Oklahoma and our clients are outraged at this apparent act of vandalism. While we have and continue to seek the removal of the Ten Commandments monument from the Capitol grounds through the judicial process, the Ten Commandments constitute a strong foundation in our clients' deeply held religious beliefs.
No evidence has linked Ten Commandments incident to the group of Satanists who seek to install their own monument at the state's
capital building.
Oklahoma State Capitol
Oklahoma City, OK
A Satanist organization is seeking to build its own statue on the steps of the Oklahoma Statehouse, four years after the conservative legislature controversially approved building a Ten Commandments monument in the same place, in what critics called a blurring of the line between church and state.
The Satanic Temple in January 2014 released designs for a 7-foot-tall statue it hopes to install. The statue depicts Satan as a goat-headed figure called Baphomet sitting on a throne adorned with a pentagram and surrounded by two smiling children. The Satanic Temple raised over $28,000 of its original $20,000 goal to build the statue.
An atheist group filed a lawsuit in an Oklahoma federal court in January 2014 to have the Ten Commandments statue removed. American Atheists contend the monument violates the constitution's establishment and equal protection clauses because it amounts to a religious endorsement on government land.
A federal judge dismissed American Atheists' lawsuit March 10, ruling the New Jersey-based nonprofit group lacked the legal standing to file the suit. In 2014, a state judge ruled against a separate constitutional challenge to the Ten Commandments monument. That ruling was appealed to the state Supreme Court.
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