With all of the efforts being put into defending the government endorsement of the Ten Commandments in Alabama, one might reasonably assume that these ten rules are very important in the lives of people in that state and, in fact, throughout the South. They must incorporate the Ten Commandments throughout their daily lives - right?

Maybe not. Sheryl McCarthy, a "daughter of Alabama," writes in Newsday:

As a daughter of Alabama, I'm familiar with Southerners' tendency to get theatrical in support of bad causes. ... These dramas were staged as if the players were engaged in a life-and-death struggle to defend Southern civilization, which would surely collapse if anyone gave an inch. Now, of course, blacks attend the University of Alabama and are free to eat in any of the state's restaurants. The last I heard, the state was still standing.

When I was growing up respectable people went to church, and one's character was judged by how well one conformed to a strict code of behavior. Beneath this veneer of moral prudishness, however, all sorts of things went on. Over the years I learned that Southerners consumed alcohol in greater quantities, were more violent and were more likely to commit incest than residents of other regions. ... Yet religion, so muscular when denouncing human foibles, has been timid about disturbing the status quo. In the Baptist church where I grew up, premarital sex and homosexuality were loudly denounced from the pulpit. But, when a church deacon tried to kill his wife, the other board members rebuffed her family's entreaties to kick him off. They didn't want to rock the boat.

This is an interesting, if unsurprising, perspective. What McCarthy writes about defending "Southern civilization" fits in well with what I wrote earlier in August about the concept of "Southern Honor" and how it drives so many political issues, even when it comes to foreign policy. The idea that the people who interested in imposing religious standards of morality on others can be the least likely to follow those standards is also nothing new, but it is well worth remembering.

Read More:

• Separation of Church and State 101
• Ten Commandments