COLUMBIA, S.C. - Two state lawmakers have again filed legislation seeking to display the Ten Commandments in public buildings.

The bill by state Sen. Mike Fair, R-Greenville, proposes that the commandments be prominently displayed in the Statehouse alongside historical documents. Rep. Marty Coates, R-Florence, proposes that the commandments be allowed on any property belonging to the state, also alongside historical documents.

Neither lawmaker specified the historical documents.

Fair said he thinks his measure will pass and be upheld by the courts if challenged, even though a Ten Commandments monument in the Alabama Judicial Building resulted in the removal of the Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore last year.

"The foundation upon which our history of law rests is at risk unless we get more assertive," Fair said. "It gets lost on some people that this country when it was founded was a Christian country."

Coates said North Carolina passed a similar law several years ago that permits the Ten Commandments to be displayed in schools as well as other public buildings.

Coates' bill almost passed in May but died at the end of the session during a Senate filibuster on unrelated legislation.

House Speaker David Wilkins, who supported Coates' bill this year, said he will support it again.

"I think it would qualify as a very important historical document," said Wilkins, R-Greenville.

But Sen. Darrell Jackson, a Columbia pastor, said other issues are more important.

"What concerns me is when you take issues of faith and turn them into issues of politics," he said. "I think with all the issues we have to deal with, to waste one minute of our time debating whether the Ten Commandments should be in the Statehouse would be a travesty."

But Coates maintains the issue isn't about religion.

"I think the issue is more of connecting to issues that are historical," he said. "The display of the Ten Commandments as a document of historical significance is the issue, not its religious context."

The U.S. Supreme Court will address the matter of publicly displaying the Ten Commandments next year, and the context of how they are displayed could play an important factor in how judges view its constitutionality, said Andrew Siegel, a constitutional law professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law.

"Displaying the Ten Commandments in the context of an exhibit that has other documents that have historically influenced the development of our moral code or our legal system would certainly give it a better chance to survive than the display that existed in Alabama," he said.

But Siegel said if a lawmaker says the purpose of the bill is to promote Christianity, the bill might not survive any constitutional challenge.

---

Information from: The Greenville News, http://www.greenvillenews.com/