LITTLE ROCK (CBS) — Workers have installed a Ten Commandments monument outside Arkansas’ Capitol, two years after lawmakers approved a measure permitting the statue on state grounds.
The 6-foot-tall monument was placed on the Capitol grounds early Tuesday. Opponents of the monument have said it amounts to an unconstitutional endorsement of religion and have threatened to sue.
Plans for Arkansas’ monument sparked a push by the Satanic Temple for a competing statue of Baphomet, a goat-headed, angel-winged creature accompanied by two children smiling at it.
The Secretary of State’s office set up a hotline to hear community members’ thoughts on the monument, CBS affiliate KTHV-TV in Little Rock reports. Ahead of the installation, nearly 140 people called to support the monument. More than 460 people called in opposition of the Satanic monument, KTHV reports.
Efforts to install that display, however, were blocked by a law enacted this year requiring legislative approval before the commission could consider a monument proposal.
Arkansas’ monument is a replica of a display at the Texas Capitol that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005.
