Fight over Thou Shalts won't wilt
Fargo council hands down its word, but foes vow to move biblical marker
By Judy Keen
USA TODAY
07/09/2007

A Ten Commandments monument will remain on the lawn outside City Hall in Fargo, N.D., for now, but the City Commission's recent vote to keep it there won't end controversy over the marker.

The Red River Freethinkers, a group of about 100 people who believe the monument violates the constitutional separation of church and state, will continue to press commissioners to allow them to erect a new marker nearby. It would feature a quote from a 1797 treaty signed by the United States and Tripoli: "The United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."

Jon Lindgren, a Freethinker and a former Fargo mayor, says the group will "try to figure out a way to bring it up again. … We do not want to go to court." The Freethinkers' proposed monument, he says, "would balance the Ten Commandments, which is quite provocative from our point of view." the rest