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5/05/00 11:55 a.m.
Buckeye Babylon
The ACLU takes Ohio to task.

By Thomas Gnau, reporter for The Middletown (Ohio) Journal

n Arkansas, "the people rule." In New Mexico, "it grows as it goes."

And in Ohio, "with God all things are possible" — except saying so without irritating the very busy bodies of the American Civil Liberties Union.

ACLU members and allies are smiling over a U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in the last week of April which ordered the Buckeye State to abandon its 41-year-old motto. A panel concluded, in a 2-1 decision, that the motto is a government endorsement of religion — and, as such, violates the First Amendment.

For decades, the motto was nothing to get excited about. A 12-year-old Cincinnati boy suggested it and launched a petition drive for the state to adopt it in 1959. But show me someone who even knew what the motto was five years ago, and I'll show you an annoyed ACLU-affiliated attorney contemplating a name-making lawsuit.

That changed a few years back. Former Ohio Gov. George Voinovich, today a GOP U.S. senator, returned from India, where he saw the words, "Government work is God's work" inscribed on a public building. The words excited Voinovich very much.

"In retrospect," editorialized the Dayton Daily News, "it may have been the curry." Or Voinovich's strong Catholicism. Whichever. At any rate, the motto was soon being imprinted in the capitol plaza in Columbus. In six-inch tall bronze letters. Large enough, certainly, for Presbyterian minister Matthew Peterson and the ACLU to notice. (That's right: The plaintiff was a Presbyterian minister.)

Notice they did, and in 1997, they sued. They were blocked, at first: A U.S. District judge in Columbus ruled 19 months ago that the motto does not violate the First Amendment. (Counting that ruling, four federal judges have split down the middle on the motto's constitutionality.)

"We felt it was inappropriate for the words of Jesus Christ to be part of the state of Ohio's pronouncements to their people," Cleveland-based ACLU attorney Mark B. Cohn told me, referring to Matthew 19:26. "Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.' "

Cohn also said the Indian words are a "very foreign concept" to Americans. (They certainly put a new spin on the timeworn phrase "Close enough for government work.") He said the ACLU wanted to do things "the American way."

The American way? The way Americans have "In God we trust" emblazoned on their currency of the realm? The way American lawmakers, courts, and city councils often open sessions with prayers?

Maybe Cohn understands the "American way," but there is something about ACLU activism and Ohio's brand of sturdy corn-fed conservatism which mixes about as well as oil and water. Last year, the First Amendment was the issue in a legal fight over Ten Commandments monuments at four Adams County high schools. The ACLU said that their presence on public property was a government endorsement of a religion. They also sued in U.S. District Court to end the Sycamore School District's practice of closing its schools for the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Where the motto mayhem goes next depends on where Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery appeals — a reconsideration at the federal appeals level or to the U.S. Supreme Court. A spokesman for Montgomery said Thursday the office has until Tuesday to decide, but no decision has been made yet.

Wherever the venue, Cohn is confident. "I'm very satisfied that this is the correct opinion," he said.

Ohioans have reacted to the latest ruling with boredom in some quarters and irritation in others. There are a few who feel mottos matter. The Ohio Senate has voted to support Montgomery's appeal. U.S. Reps. Mike Oxley, a Republican, and Tony Hall, a Dayton Democrat, have said they will introduce a resolution in the U.S. House stating that the court misinterpreted the Constitution.

"The motto and similar expressions remind us that liberty and democracy rest on the belief that each man and woman possesses fundamental rights that come from a place beyond the reach of human laws and human government," the Columbus Dispatch editorialized last Sunday.

Indeed. But not, apparently, beyond the reach of the ACLU. Or just two federal judges.

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