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Does the principle of vibration - ''nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates'' - deserve a spot alongside "honor your father and mother" in a Utah public park?
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider that question in an appeal from Pleasant Grove, which has had a Ten Commandments monument standing in its city park for years. It wants to block Summum, a Salt Lake City-based religious group, from adding its Seven Aphorisms.
The city's lawyers argue that allowing Summum's display would force municipalities to either remove long-standing monuments or give equal access to any group demanding it.
They hope to overturn a decision last year by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, which said requiring the city to permit the display of Summum's tenets will further free speech.
The case has drawn national interest, with advocates weighing in on both sides.
The American Center for Law & Justice in Washington, D.C., which is representing Pleasant Grove, objects that the 10th Circuit's ruling would empower groups to demand public space. Displays could include "an atheist group's Monument to Freethought," or a denunciation of homosexuals from Rev. Fred Phelps, a Kansas minister who stages anti-gay demonstrations, the center said in a brief.
But the American Humanist Association contends the 10th Circuit's decision is correct, and stems from the religious right's push to place Nativity scenes and the Ten Commandments in public areas.
"Now they must reap what they have sown," Mel Lipman, an attorney and association president, said in a statement. "Either they get their monuments at the price of letting all others in, or they give them up."
Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, added officials could have avoided the controversy by refusing to put up the Ten Commandments.
Salt Lake City attorney Brian Barnard, who represents Summum, said the issue is one of "simple fairness."
"If you let one private group put up a monument in a public park, you have to let another private group put up a monument," he said.
In a separate ruling last year, the 10th Circuit also gave the go-ahead for a Summum monument in a Duchesne park. The court ruled that parks are public forums, and restrictions on speech based solely on content are forbidden except in narrow circumstances.
The two decisions overturned rulings by U.S. District Judge Dee Benson in Salt Lake City. Summum sued Duchesne in 2003 and Pleasant Grove in 2005 after the cities rejected its proposed monoliths.
The Ten Commandments display in Pleasant Grove was donated by the Fraternal Order of Eagles, while the Cole family made the donation in Duchesne. The cities say the donations make the monuments government property, which means they are not required to give equal space to private individuals.
The Supreme Court is hearing only the Pleasant Grove appeal, but any decision likely would affect the Duchesne case.
Summum - which was founded in 1975 and is headquartered in a pyramid-shaped temple - is based on Gnostic Christianity and encourages some Egyptian practices, such as mummification.