Plead the First

Nathan Tabor, “a conservative political activist based in Kernersville, North Carolina,” brings us the latest round of ACLU-bashing with an article on The Conservative Voice entitled The ACLU—Not Looking Out for Your Best Interests. He starts off by listing a few threats to our liberties:

Unfortunately, there are a number of threats to our liberty today. Big government, with its burdensome taxes and extensive regulations, threatens the liberty of small business owners. Corrupt judges threaten the religious liberty of schoolchildren who want to pray in public schools. Violent crime forces the elderly to be virtual prisoners in their own homes—an assault on their liberty. And the list goes on and on.

I wonder if the list that goes “on and on” includes warrantless wiretapping and the Patriot Act? Tabor doesn’t give many specifics, but instead quickly moves on to taking the ACLU to task:

If a public high school student wants to hold a prayer meeting at school, the ACLU is the first in line trying to sabotage the project. In the vocabulary of the ACLU, there is no such thing as religious liberty. Instead, the organization routinely fights for freedom FROM religion—not freedom to exercise religion.

A quick search of the ACLU’s website shows that they defended the rights of a group of Massachusetts students to distribute religiously-themed candy canes, supported a Michigan valedictorian’s right to include Bible verses in her high school yearbook entry, and fought to allow a second grader to sing “Awesome God” at her school talent show. Those are just cases involving religious liberty at schools – there are plenty more where the ACLU supported the religious liberty of individuals and groups in other areas of the public sphere. It’s true that the ACLU has been against school-endorsed religious observances, but they have consistently stood up for the rights of individuals to express and practice their religious beliefs in schools and elsewhere. Claiming that to the ACLU “there is no such thing as religious liberty” is demonstrably false.

If a mayor wants to place a Christmas display on the grounds of City Hall, the ACLU is at the ready to put a stop to it. If a judge wants to post the Ten Commandments in the courthouse, the ACLU is prepared to fight the idea—all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Rightly so, since these activities are against the first amendment. Government entities have no business endorsing any particular religion by erecting displays dedicated to that religion. Would Tabor be so eager to support government-erected religious displays if a mayor wanted to place a Wiccan display on the grounds of City Hall? I suspect not. Again, the important thing to remember is that the instances they fight against are government-established displays. The ACLU often defends the rights of private individuals and groups to use public areas for religious displays and activities, disproving the notion that they are out to remove all religion from the public square.

The article goes on to describe a recent case that the ACLU took part in where they defended the right of a high school boy to wear skirts and kilts to school, calling it “silliness.” I’ll agree that the case is a bit strange, but one of the major purposes of our Constitution is to protect the rights of the minority. By definition, a minority view or behavior is often going to seem “strange” or “silly” to the majority. In this case, the boy in question was simply protesting his school’s no-shorts rule, so while he may not actually have been a “minority” I believe that the principle remains – the fact that an issue may seem “silly” isn’t a valid reason to be dismissive of a case.

Tabor closes with the following:

The only word that adequately describes the ACLU is “extremist.� It is not extreme in the defense of liberty—it is extreme in imposing bizarre attitudes and policies on the rest of us.

That statement itself is bizarre, considering that the ACLU has no power to impose any attitudes or policies on anyone. They can only argue a case before a judge. It is always up to the judge to weigh both sides in light of our laws and Constitution, and then to decide if their argument has merit. If the ACLU is indeed making silly arguments, then Tabor shouldn’t have anything to worry about.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 7th, 2006 at 10:21 pm and is filed under Politics, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.