MONTGOMERY, Alabama -- A bill to make way for the Ten Commandments in public buildings, such as courthouses and schools, passed out of an Alabama Senate committee Thursday, sending it to the full Senate for a vote as early as next week.

If passed by the state Senate and signed by the governor, the state would put a constitutional amendment on the next ballot to let Alabama voters decide the issue.

Last week, the Alabama House approved the same bill after more than two hours of meandering and sometimes factually inaccurate debate.

In the Constitution, Campaign Finance, Ethics and Elections Committee meeting Thursday, the committee chairman, Sen. Bryan Taylor, R-Prattville, said that debate has him concerned about the so-called "Lemon test" the courts use to determine whether a law is constitutional.

"The federal courts will look at a law and determine whether it is constitutional or not by its content or its purpose," Taylor said. "If there is a record of a purpose to establish a particular religion, then certainly someone could make an issue of that."

However, Sen. Trip Pittman, R-Daphne, said the value of the Ten Commandments can be seen in the people who have followed them.

"And how do we know that? Because the people who have followed those commandments have inhabited most of the world," he said. "They have procreated. They have remained healthy. They have respected private property. They haven't borne false witness, which is now rampant on the Internet and caused all kinds of tragedies."

For Pittman, that value is secondary to the bill's constitutionality.

"We talk about the constitutionality of them, but we have to understand the purpose of these is the laws of God," he said. "And we think they may have passed irrelevance because of the constitutional question, but beyond that, which is the most important, it's also about behavior and conduct through the ages."