Our legislature is dominated by a conservative Republican supermajority. These folks claim to be conservative Christians. They claim to value the Constitution. They claim to value the authority of the State.

This week, they are ignoring the Christian value of helping the poor, but are expending considerable energy to pass otherwise irrelevant legislation that belittles the Christian religion, violates the US Constitution and violates the Tennessee Constitution.

Faced with criticism for this, they even amended the "Bible as the official state book" bill, justifying their actions primarily by characterizing the Bible as being important because it is used as a record-keeping family genealogy ledger. This intentional prevarication also violates the Christian value of simple honesty, while continuing to violate the state and federal Constitutions.

The truth of the matter is that the bill's sponsors want to use government to impose their religion on all Tennesseans. They could care less about the state or federal constitutions and only want to assert that this is a Christian state. Many others voting for the bill do so knowing it violates the Constitutions and their oaths of office, but are too cowardly to risk being characterized as voting against the Bible. Still others who oppose it will only give the reason that putting the Bible alongside other official state items belittles the Bible's status, but sidestep the obvious unconstitutionality of the measure.

The saddest part of it all is that this pandering will work, and not once, but twice. Lots of Tennessee voters will rally behind the bill's sponsors and legislators who vote for the bill. These same voters will also be brought to their feet again as they become incensed and outraged when the courts ultimately rule the entire thing as unconstitutional.

These legislators have in hand the Attorney General's opinion, stating the obvious, that this measure is unconstitutional, yet they proceed with it anyway. It will never happen, but they should be penalized for knowingly and willingly taking action to break the law.