When the ACLU claims to be the “guardian” of religious liberty…
Posted on August 14, 2006
A new entry on the ProCon website under the section “Is the ACLU Good for America?” provides opportunity to permanently dirtnap the notion that the ACLU gives a rip about religious liberty.
For the ACLU to trumpet their defense of religious liberty is kind of like an arsonist having burnt down a house and being shocked at the lack of appreciation from the homeowners when he returns to shine the doorknobs. Something the ACLU does regularly to “prove” that they aren’t anti-Christian fascists is to direct people to a document they’ve compiled that they seem to think will convince Americans otherwise. Nice little propaganda piece for the unwashed masses, but it’s really nothing more than an old Baldwin-esque diversion to give the appearance of “aid[ing] the reactionaries to get free speech now and then” in order to advance the REAL agenda.
You’d think that with the tens of thousands cases the ACLU has litigated (they claim 6,000 per year), and with the First Amendment supposedly being their “bread and butter,” they’d have hundereds of cases to point to. On the contrary, of the couple dozen cases, one of their “their” headline cases is that of a little NJ girl was forbidden from singing “Awesome God” at her talent show despite having followed EVERY rule, is not even their case at all, but ADF’s. Not only that, they include Dover v Kitzmiller, which was actually a restriction on the liberty of a local school board to determine its own curriculum (well, actually to simply make a book available in the school library that gives an alternative view to Darwinism) — nothing to do with “religious liberty.”
The smackdown comes courtesy of ADF on this question: Is the ACLU anti-religion?
ADF provides a swift Janikowski to the ACLU’s granny-panties with this answer, which clearly demonstrates the ACLU’s sinister duplicity. A sampling from the ACLU buffet of madness:
The ACLU backed a lawsuit against Yeshiva University, an Orthodox Jewish school, because the university would not allow two lesbians to live in married student housing. The school holds the traditional Jewish position that homosexual behavior is a violation of God’s law. The school lost, and the ACLU crowed about how it had forced a private faith-based organization to violate its core beliefs. ACLU attorney Matthew Coles said, “It’s a fabulous ruling.”
In Oklahoma, a thirty-year veteran school teacher had been teaching Bible lessons to his students during non-school time. The students voluntarily participated. The ACLU filed a lawsuit on against the teacher and the curriculum publisher, stating that they were “co-conspirators to establish religion.” The case went to a jury, which found against the teacher and publisher, but only awarded the plaintiffs $251 – an indication of how they really felt about the ACLU lawsuit. But the story does not end there. ACLU backed attorneys turned around and sought more than eighty thousand dollars from the teacher for their legal fees and costs. The Alliance Defense Fund stepped in, free of charge, to help him. The ACLU-backed attorneys eventually received only a fraction of their original demand.
In Louisiana, the ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging a voluntary prayer group of Christian teachers. The teachers met on their own time, during recess, and not during instructional time. 7 In addition, the ACLU’s executive director has compared school officials who allowed a public prayer to the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and the London subway, 8 as well as calling for jail, stating that individuals that pray publicly “should be removed from society.”
In the ACLU’s defense of its “dedication” to religious liberty, they cite a case out of Cranston, RI:
The ACLU of Rhode Island (2003) interceded on behalf of an interdenominational group of carolers who were denied the opportunity to sing Christmas carols on Christmas Eve to inmates at the women’s prison in Cranston, Rhode Island.
Here’s the funny thing about this one in particular — in the same city the very next year, let’s see what the ACLU does. I’ll let ADF take the mic:
The ACLU sued the city of Cranston, Rhode Island, which had opened the front lawn of its city hall on an equal basis for “seasonal and holiday displays.” Citizens were allowed to provide displays, which could be either religious or secular. The city also posted a disclaimer that read: “The public holiday displays are strictly from private citizens or groups. They do not represent an official view of the City of Cranston, nor are they endorsed by the city.” Displays included a Santa Claus, a menorah, and a snowman, along with a crèche. The ACLU took offense with the crèche. An ADF-allied attorney came to the defense of the city, and a U.S. district court judge dismissed the ACLU’s lawsuit. He noted that nothing in the city’s public statements or in its implementation of its policy for Christmas displays “reveals or even remotely supports an inference that a religious purpose was behind the creation of the limited public forum.”
They ONLY targeted the CRECHE!!! Kind of like the official seals in Los Angeles, Redlands and Tijeras, NM. Only the crosses must go! Pomona may stay…the Zia may stay!
It comes down to this:
These cities and schools — where do they even get the idea that a man can’t share his faith on a public sidewalk, that a little girl can’t sing a song that mentions God in a talent show, that university student groups cannot select their membership based on shared beliefs, that a kid can’t wear a T-shirt with Bible verse in school, that the word Christmas may not be included on a school calendar, that a kid can’t read his Bible during recess, that even a moment of silence is “unconstitutional?” …and we can go on. What justification is used when the government to decides to muscle free expression of faith out of the public square? The echoing refrain is as predictable as Ted Kennedy is drunk — SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE. This was not some spontaneous sea-change. It happened somehow…and what group has been most responsible for imposing the distorted concept of Constitutional law on our legal system and our culture? Duh.
So while the ACLU does defend a sweaty street preacher here and there or files an amicus brief in support of another organzation’s case (and takes credit for it), it cannot be denied that the ACLU has created this anti-liberty atmosphere in the first place during their eight-decade rampage through the courts and the culture. There would be no lack of clarity today that makes such cases necessary if it weren’t for the ACLU.
The ACLU’s vision of religious liberty is that of a man who beats his wife every day, but buys her a bag of ice on Saturday.
» Filed Under 1st Amendment, ACLU, History
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4 Responses to “When the ACLU claims to be the “guardian” of religious liberty…”
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“the ACLU’s executive director has compared school
officials who allowed a public prayer to the terrorists who attacked the World Trade
Center and the London subway, 8 as well as calling for jail, stating that individuals that
pray publicly “should be removed from society.”
I guess they forgot about the second part of the 1st Ammendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” It’s in the Constitution. Maybe they should read it
The ACLU does defend religion as long as the religion agrees with them like the WBC and it’s anti war jargon. They even tolerate the “God hates fags” jargon to deal with them.
“It’s clear that either you’re not familiar with the case or you are perfectly comfortably lying about it. The book in question, Pandas and People, was nothing but a lightly edited version of an openly creationist textbook from two decades ago. You’re probably familiar with the 1987 SCOTUS decision (Edwards v. Aguillard) that forbids the teaching of creationism in public schools.”
Sorry GW, what’s clear is that YOU are not familiar with the case. The intention of the school in this case was to read a statement to the effect that there is credible dissent from the Darwinian theory of evolution and the origin of life and to make students aware that a book was available IN THE LIBRARY that offers an alternative view to Darwinism. There was no “teaching of creationism.” So what if Jones was appointed by Bush…care to tell me who appointed John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Earl Warren, Sandra Day O’Connor, Warren Burger?
But no matter…that’s not even the issue. I pointed that case out for an entirely different reason which is clear if you actually understood the point you’re responding to. I will, however, re-explain — I used this as an example of how lean the ACLU’s “religious liberty” docket remains. That they use a case like this, which has little to do with religious liberty, in an attempt to beef up their claims demonstrates my point.
Care to answer the conclusions of the entire post? You pick out ONE thing, with the point you made being completely irrelvant anyway, that you felt you could dispute in order to distract attention. This says to me that you don’t have the firepower to dispute what I have written.
Finally:
“There are no “alternatives to Darwinism” that biologists are aware of”
Yes, the academy will not allow any view that jeopardizes the rigid conformity of extremist naturalism. Your viewpoint and that of the unaware “bile-ogists” is less science and more philosophy as a completely materialistic explanation of the origin of life in the universe is as faith-based as the position that a pre-existing intelligence at least initiated the mechanisms and conditions from which life resulted.
“. The intention of the school in this case was to read a statement to the effect that there is credible dissent from the Darwinian theory of evolution and the origin of life and to make students aware that a book was available IN THE LIBRARY that offers an alternative view to Darwinism. There was no “teaching of creationism.””
You really should read the case. The judge lambasted the school board witnesses for their lies. Its clear their intent was to teach their religious views as scientific truth. Thats not permitted. The opinion is wonderful at catching not only the subterfuge of the board, but also of evaluating the fraud that is intelligent design.
The board is free to believe what it wants. Its not free to establish its religion by using it to define what will be scientific truth.