When I told people that I was moving to a little town in Oklahoma called Stigler, they inevitably went to Wikipedia to get some more information on my new stomping grounds.
It was always the same old story.
“You’re going to the town that put the 10 Commandments in front of their courthouse, but couldn’t spell ‘adultery’ right?”
To much of the world, that is what Stigler is known for — its decision to perhaps push the definition of “separation of church and state” to the limits by agreeing to put a stone monument on government property. The decision, and the subsequent lawsuit by the ACLU, thrusted the small town of 3,000 into the national spotlight for a while as commentators argued if it was legal and whether or not the commandments should be allowed in such a public place.
But one notable detail was overlooked. Chiseled into the tablet, the seventh commandment read, “Thou shalt not commit adultry.” (By the way, spell check just automatically formatted it to ‘adultery’ so I had to go back and edit it)
It was the perfect punch line for far-left commentators. In their opinion, it was just a hick town that “clung” to its religion, propagating it mindlessly whatever they could. Their unintelligence was, for the commentators, confirmed by the misspelling.
And now, for anyone who checks out the Stigler Wiki page, they see the controversy and the misspelling.
I have to admit, the monument was one of the first things I checked out when I moved into town. Sure enough, there was the misspelling shining in the sun. I could not understand how it hadn’t been fixed yet. I mean, it’s kind of embarrassing to allow yourself to be the butt of a joke.
Somehow, the 10 commandments issue was brought up in the office this week, and I mentioned that I couldn’t believe the misspelling hadn’t been fixed yet.
Misspelling? What misspelling?
Without exception, every person in the office who was originally from Stigler had no idea the word was misspelled. Every person who moved to Stigler knew about the blunder.
For some reason, the misspelling just isn’t common knowledge amongst the majority of residents here. My theory is that the misspelled word wasn’t noticed right away and by the time someone did notice it, the local media decided that people were so sick of all the 10 commandment news that they didn’t publish it.
But it made its way to Wikipedia and the world knows all about it.
I’m thinking about writing an article for the newspaper about it, but for now, I decided to just settle on the blog entry. I don’t mind the commandments at the courthouse, though I can sympathize with both sides of the argument. I just think we should fix it.
Let’s raise some money, and do this adultery thing right. Well, you know what I mean.
