Human Events | Rabbi Aryeh Spero | July 20, 2007
For the past forty years the ACLU has used every legal machination to make the display of Christmas trees illegal if placed in a public institution or on property where there is even the remotest connection to a tax dollar. They’ve bludgeoned America with their claim that such displays violate the separation of church and state. The display of the Ten Commandments? Illegal, they say. Prayer in school? Prohibited, they charge. The mere mention of God at a graduation ceremony — grounds for a law suit. The display of a Menorah — the next morning the ACLU is at the court steps already litigating.
How strict are they in their interpretation of separation of church and state? In Pittsburgh they went so far as to demand that a municipal parking lot be off limits to those parking there to visit a local Christmas display at a nearby church.
So when the University of Michigan decided to fund $25,000 worth of ritual foot-washers for Islamic students wishing to pray, one assumed the ACLU would yell foul. After all, it is a public institution, receiving federal and state taxes and using that money for a religious device whose purpose is to facilitate prayer. Not only did the ACLU not object but it also supported the expenditure as “reasonable,” something it can never bring itself to say when activities are for Judeo-Christian expression or symbols.
The Byron Union school district in California has decided that its public schools should set aside days and assignments where all students choose a Muslim name, recite passages from the Koran, and periodically give up certain comforts as “forms of fasting” that correspond to Ramadan. Has the ACLU brought this school district to court as it has hundreds of times when schools simply mention something involving Christianity or when a student reads her own Bible on her own time at recess or when a student chooses a religious theme for an essay topic? The ACLU has been silent. To the ACLU, the non-invasive, mere presence of anything Christian in school is far more “dangerous” than the actual, coerced undertaking of Islamic religious activities and beliefs in America’s public schools.
For those of us who have for years diligently observed the selective inconsistencies and overt hypocrisy of the ACLU, none of this comes as a surprise. Rather, it is a verification. For we know what motivates the ACLU and what is its ultimate goal. Long ago it decided to do what ever it takes to expunge America of its affinity to Christianity and strip our society of its Judeo-Christian touchstone and foundation. It expanded the context of separation of church and state to accomplish this goal, and a good-willed citizenry acquiesced for they did not wish to question what they assumed were the pure, constitutional motivations behind the ACLU’s campaign. Who wants to question an organization with beguiling head-banners such as American and Civil Liberties.
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Even if the ACLU has attempted to remove religious references from public courthouses and the like, you can’t say they are attempting to stifle free speech when expressed by individuals, even on public property.
The ACLU has backed the extremist Westboro Baptist Church and their right to protest at the funerals of fallen soldiers.
If the ACLU is backing the most extreme voices within Christianity, it shows that the apprehension over the possibility of “hate speech laws” (at least within the U.S.) is unfounded.
What is an unfortunate is that there is a real need for an organization that works to protect the rights of the most vulnerable in our society, and to protect society in general from creeping encroachments on our liberty. This ostensibly is the mission of the ACLU.
Likewise, in theory, Christians, who are directed by their faith to work for social justice, and assist the least of their neighbors, should be among the ACLUs most fervent supporters.
In practice however, the ACLU, however, has very much undermined it’s own cause, through a very poor and seriously flawed case selection system. Legal action to stop the display of Christmas mangers or the Ten Commandments, for example, antagonize potential supporters, are frivoulous, and divert resources from individuals who are much more worthy objects of their attention.
I’m sure there are thousands of people every day in the United States who are seeing their rights trampled. Not since the nineteen-twenties have rich and powerful corporations exerted so much power and influence over our government, and have workers been so oppressed and disenfranchised in the face of globalization and out-sourcing. Additionally, and historically, civil rights and freedoms always tend to be pushed back and and reduced during wartime, even fake, unnecessary, manufactured wars, like the one we are in now.
Where is the legal assistance for the wounded and traumatized veteran denied hospital care and benefits and cast to the curb? Where is the legal assistance for the career employee whose pension fund has just been looted by a corporate raider? Where is the legal assistance for the immigrant swept up in the latest INS raid, separated from his or her family, and sent to languish in a detention center for months on end without a hearing?
It infuriates me thay instead of helping people like that, the ACLU has been squandering its energy and resources fighting meaningless and inconsequential battles to suppress harmless expressions of religious faith.