POSTED 1:12 PM, JUNE 27, 2017, BY CBS NEWS

LITTLE ROCK (CBS) — Workers have installed a Ten Commandments monument outside Arkansas’ Capitol, two years after lawmakers approved a measure permitting the statue on state grounds.

The 6-foot-tall monument was placed on the Capitol grounds early Tuesday. Opponents of the monument have said it amounts to an unconstitutional endorsement of religion and have threatened to sue.

Plans for Arkansas’ monument sparked a push by the Satanic Temple for a competing statue of Baphomet, a goat-headed, angel-winged creature accompanied by two children smiling at it.

The Secretary of State’s office set up a hotline to hear community members’ thoughts on the monument, CBS affiliate KTHV-TV in Little Rock reports. Ahead of the installation, nearly 140 people called to support the monument. More than 460 people called in opposition of the Satanic monument, KTHV reports.

Efforts to install that display, however, were blocked by a law enacted this year requiring legislative approval before the commission could consider a monument proposal.

Arkansas’ monument is a replica of a display at the Texas Capitol that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005.

http://5newsonline.com/2017/06/27/ten-co...kansas-capitol/

PART B: Van Buren Man Accused Of Destroying Ten Commandments Monument At Arkansas State Capitol

8:03 AM, JUNE 28, 2017,

A controversial Ten Commandments monument was knocked down and destroyed on Wednesday (June 28) — less than 24 hours after it was erected at the Arkansas State Capitol.

Michael Reed, 32, of Van Buren, is accused of driving through the statue around 5:15 a.m., reported CBS affiliate THV11. Reed was allegedly filming on his cell phone when he knocked the statue over, and posted it online.

He surrendered and was taken to a local hospital, and his car was towed.

Reed is facing charges of defacing objects of public interest, criminal trespass, and first degree criminal mischief.

This isn’t the first time Reed has been accused of destroying a Ten Commandments statue. In 2014, he was accused of ramming his car into a Ten Commandments monument at the Oklahoma State Capitol, reports affiliate KFOR.

In a letter sent to the Tulsa World in 2015, Reed described his battle with mental illness. He was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder after he was checked into Norman’s Griffin Memorial Hospital in January 2015.

Reed said in the letter that his psychotic episodes led him to believe that Michael Jackson’s spirit was contained in a killer virus inside meat, and that he heard voices that led him to believe that “Satan was the real God, and God the Father was a cruel god.” He also tried to reach Satan’s high priestess, whom he called Gwyneth Paltrow and believed he was the reincarnation of an occult leader.

He talks about the incident in this video posted in May.