Potential spots assigned for 10 Commandments, Satanic monument on Arkansas Capitol grounds

A Review Subcommittee of the Capitol Arts and Grounds Commission assigned spots for a 10 Commandments monument and a monument to the occult creature Baphomet Wednesday and set meeting dates for the sponsors to present more detailed engineering specifications.

The committee’s purpose was to perform due diligence, said Kelly Boyd, chief deputy with Secretary of State Mark Martin’s office, and it did so during the hour-and-a-half meeting. After hearing technical details from the monuments’ sponsors, the subcommittee assigned the 10 Commandments monument a potential spot near the Supreme Court and the Baphomet statue a potential spot near Third Street near apartments rented by legislators.

The two proposals must present further plans with engineering specifications – the sponsors of the 10 Commandments on Nov. 16; the sponsors of the Baphomet statue on Jan. 25. If the projects advance, both will be followed by public hearings. Boyd said his office had received 620 phone calls about the Baphomet statue. At that point, it will be up to the full commission to decide if the projects are approved.

If so, the Legislature would have to approve the Baphomet statue. The 10 Commandments monument has already been approved by a state law passed in 2015. Both sponsors would be required to pay 10% of the cost of construction and installation into a fund that will be used to maintain them.

The 10 Commandments monument is sponsored by the American History & Heritage Foundation. The group’s general counsel, Travis Story, said the 6,000-pound monument is 44 inches wide and 78 inches tall and a replica of one erected in Texas and other states, the most recent being Missouri. The monument has been completed and its $12,000 cost funded. He said Nabholz has volunteered to provide labor and materials for the pad.

The Baphomet statue was submitted by the Massachusetts-based Satanic Temple on Aug. 8. It is eight feet, six inches high and features a winged figure with a goat head and a human body accompanied by two children. It weighs nearly 3,000 pounds and, like the 10 Commandments monument, is already constructed. It is in Salem, Mass., and cost about $100,000 to produce.

The group’s sponsor, Lucien Greaves of Cambridge, Mass., a co-founder of The Satanic Temple, told the committee the statue’s purpose is to celebrate religious liberty, government neutrality toward religion, and marginalized religious groups. He said if the Commission does not allow his statue, the courts likely would force the state to remove the 10 Commandments monument at taxpayer expense. He said his group would withdraw its proposal if the 10 Commandments proposal is also withdrawn.

Tony Leraris, a Fort Smith architect and member of the subcommittee, expressed the only vocal opposition, saying, “Just the whole thing with a Satanic monument, to me it just speaks of evilness, and I’m trying to figure out why we would want to put something on our state grounds as a monument to something like this.”

But the three-person subcommittee’s role was to perform due diligence on the submission’s technical specifications, so a spot was assigned.

Afterwards, Greaves said he does hope his statue is accepted, saying the group would not have spent $100,000 and flown to Arkansas “simply for a failed project.” Asked if he was trying to celebrate religious pluralism or just his own religion, he said, “We feel that us being to contrast our monument where the 10 Commandments is speaks to religious diversity in general, not just framed as Satanist versus a Christian monument.”

He said he believed he was treated fairly by the subcommittee.

Two other monuments are being considered by the subcommittee at their next regular meeting. One is a submission by the Saline Atheist and Skeptic Society, which wants a “wall of separation” standing between the 10 Commandments, the Baphomet statue and the Capitol. Also being proposed is a monument to “Gold Star families” who lost loved ones in war. Six spots are left on the Capitol grounds.