December, on what basis do you claim that the ACLU opposes the constitutional protection of free exercise of religion?
And on what basis do you claim they oppose the 10th?
Thanks you, DPW for a sincere, non-rhetorical post. I agree with most of your points.
I didn’t say that the ACLU was bad; I just said that they tilted towards the Democrats. As you reminded me, it was the Democratic nominee who was a member and the Republicans who attacked him for that membership. Evidently the idea that the ACLU tilts toward Dems is pretty widespread. I’ve never seen the Democrats attack a Republican candidate for being an ACLU member.
I sort-of agree with DPW that one reason the ACLU tilts toward Dems is that they tend to agree on the meaning of civil liberties, but I think it’s the Dems who are more deficient in their understanding of the concept. E.g., I’m strongly pro-choice, so I liked the result of Roe v. Wade. However, I and other conservatives noticed that this result was achieved at the cost of a serious reduction democracy. Democracy is a vital civil liberty.
I’m not arguing whther or not it was worth it. My point is: most liberals and the ACLU didn’t even seem to care that the increase in abortion rights was accompanied by a decrease in democracy. How many of you liberal’s reading this post noticed and cared?
BTW I kind of remember having a card when I was an ACLU member. Of course, Bush’s comment was an ugly reminder of the old accusaton “card-carrying Communist.”
This is false; if anything it was the other way 'round. A higher % of GOP voted for this act than Dems. It was a bloc of southern Dems who opposed it.
OTOH the Dems support millions of mandatory government requirements, too many to list in a lifetime. Income tax. Financial reporting, OSHA inspections, EPA inspections child-care worker inspecitons. Gazillions of reports to a host of federal and state agencies.
Cite?
Cite?
OTOH the Dems oppose allowing people to peacefully protest near an abortion clinic.
As they should. There should be no right to strike against the public. You cannot find this right in the Constitution.
:rolleyes: I’ll bet you $10,000 against 5 cents that this isn’t true.
Yes, this is exactly my impression.
Not so. What about Bakke, Adarand, and all the other reverse discrimination cases? How about cases requiring that welfare and other social services be paid to various groups, such as new entrants into a state and illegal immigrants? These cases take money from the ax-payers for the benefit of the poor. What about court decisions requiring that illegal immigrant children be accepted in American schools? What about the question of whether the rape and murder of Jesse Durkheising was a hate crime?
I’m not saying that the ACLU is right or wrong on these cases, but there certainly are lots of them out there.
What second amendment cases has the ACLU refused to take on?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Dr. Lao *
**
All of them. 
Zebra, see this thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=86344
december, what is your rationale for saying that the ACLU opposes the free exercise clause of the First Amendment? Check the following:
http://www.aclu.org/cgi-bin/aclu/AT-aclu_newssearch.cgi
You will see a brief list of specific cases where they defended the Free Exercise clause. For instance, backing a church in a zoning battle, supporting prisoners’ rights to religious diets, opposing a school uniform policy requiring objecting families to justify their religious reasons for objecting, defending religious observance rites of prisoners, and arguing the rights of a woman to not follow through court ordered divorce counseling at a Catholic agency but instead to get counseling at another agency of her choice. And of course my favorite on the list, defending a Louisiana woman’s right to get a driver’s license without a Social Security number, on the grounds that the SSN is “the mark of the beast”.
There you have it, specific cases where the ACLU defended free exercise cases. And some of them were even on the side of Christians, whom the GOP is so fond of kissing up to.
buddy1 said:
Apparently not. I fail to see anything there that makes sense. First, read the name of the organization again - American Civil Liberties Union. Civil Liberties are broader than just the First Amendment. The First Amendment happens to be a key one because it includes religion and free speech and free assembly, but it is not exclusive.
As for the woman being too old, so? How is that your decision? That’s not a fair justification for the courts to use to prevent it - that’s agism, which, incidentally, is a civil rights issue. To deny the case on those grounds would invite the ACLU to sue on behalf of the woman’s right to have a child. It may not be a smart choice, but it’s her choice.
Next are a string of arguments essentially saying the child will have to be on welfare, and welfare is evil, and this child doesn’t deserve welfare. Sorry, that doesn’t follow. First, whether welfare is evil or not is a different debate. However, it is currently legal under a variety of programs. If the woman were to get pregnant by some other means and required welfare and qualified for it, she would get it. So if she gets pregnant by this means and requires welfare and qualifies for it, she should get it too. That’s a civil liberties issue, too, about being punished for other people’s crimes (i.e. the child). But as has been pointed out, it is an assumption on your part that welfare will be required.
What about the father providing a poor role model? Sorry, that is not a good justification. We have tons of lousy parents providing lousy role models all throughout this country. Being a lousy role model is not grounds to lose custody of children. The few cases where this seems to be legally debated fall into the category of adoption - such as gay couples adopting and whether gays are good role models or not. You will note that is a civil liberties issue.
In short, you have not provided legal justification to prevent it.
Keeping in mind that the phrase “birth control” refers to both pregnancy prevention and cessation. I give you:
so that a health professional who believes that abstinence is the only moral choice for birth control is allowed to deny birth control to patients requesting it.
Don’t like that one? how about
Unborn child has a fundemental and indvidual right to life, according to them, however, as we’ve been able to see from Mr. Bush, that ‘human life’ goes all the way to the petri dish of a fertilized egg.
And, since some methods of recognizable birth control act as a means of preventing the fertilized egg from implanting on the wall of the uterus, those methods, too, would be against the Republican platform as cited, as well as any and all abortions (tho they don’t want to spell that one out).
Is anyone else amused by december asking for cites from others, but not supplying them when asked?
No. not at all. In my experience, when cites are provided, they consist of links to Amazon.com ad for a particular book where the ‘proof’ lies and/or a link to a columnists’ column (or better yet, a link to an Amazon.com ad for a columnists’ book).
shrug.
and, all of the pontification aside, december’s original point has been demonstratably shown to be false, yet he’s making references to (w/o cites of course) cases (which may or may not be as he portrays them).
Keep in mind, please - the ACLU has limited resources. They cannot take on every single case that is in existence. They attempt to pick out cases where a clear civil rights issue is demonstrated, in the hope that if they win, then similar cases will then be handled the same way. To list cases they chose not to work on, proves only that they don’t have an unlimited supply of funds.
No. Stop there. It does not. “Birth control” refers, in the general use of the word, to pregnancy prevention. Pro-choice people routinely go out of their way to opine that they are, at the least, uncomfortable with people who use abortion “as a form of birth control.”
Since when is granting a professional freedom equivalent to denying someone else the freedom to seek different professionals? If I as a professional refuse to make investments in, say, companies with direct investment in Myanmar, am I denying that company access to capital, or just my (or my customers’) capital?
The Republican Pary’s stance on abortion is wrong, and candidly, anti-freedom. But the Party does not oppose birth control.
Ok, wring if you defined “birth control” to include abortion, you’d have me. That’s not what I meant by the phrase.
This is an example of why I assert that liberals have a defective concept of civil liberties. Liberal tend to focus on one party’s civil liberties to the exclusion of another’s. That a couple has the right to use birth control needn’t be contradicted by the right of a particular health care professional not to provide it. The couple can get their birth control pills prescribed by some other doctor. All parties deserve protection. 
wring, you may have a point on this one. It would depend on the exact meaning of the platform language, which is probably indeterminate.
Thanks for the cites, Irishman. I stand corrected. I was unaware of these cases.
I was thinking of the many school cases where the free exercise clause would support one side and the establishment clause would support the other, e.g., Moment of Silence, voluntary student prayer at football games. In none of these cases did the ACLU take the free exercise side, to my knowledge.
You’re wrong. The ACLU has consistently opposed institutional offerings of such things because they constitute Establishment.
But when and individual or a non-school-affiliated group wants to pray, or hold prayer meetings, or prosyltize during recess, or whatever, the ACLU has equally consistently sided with the students wishing to Exercise.
Hmmm. What grade did I earn for previewing that post?
Take the last letter from the third word in the second paragraph. Remove it. Place it here:
That’s my grade.
december: *Amendment II – the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, OPPOSE *
Bull. They happen to have a different interpretation of that right from the one you seem to have, but theirs is the one shared by the Supreme Court and the legislatures of all 50 states as well as Congress. Here’s what the ACLU actually says about the right to keep and bear arms:
Moreover, the ACLU has complained about encroachment on the rights of gun owners by draconian legislation for “counter-terrorism” and habeas corpus “reform”. In particular, they joined forces with the NRA and other gun-advocacy and civil-rights groups in proposing a new model for law enforcement policy that would better safeguard the civil liberties of gun owners.
In short, while the ACLU does not consider it unconstitutional for the law to regulate and restrict gun ownership, they are indeed deeply involved in the struggle to protect the civil rights of people who legally own guns. If december had bothered to do a search on “second amendment” at the ACLU website before dumping his unsubstantiated opinions on us as usual, he would have found that out.
december: Thanks for the cites, Irishman. I stand corrected. I was unaware of these cases.
Because you never bothered to take a fucking look at any source of evidence before spewing out your argumentum ab ano assertions, you—you dilatory ignorance-fighter, you.
I was thinking of the many school cases where the free exercise clause would support one side and the establishment clause would support the other, e.g., Moment of Silence, voluntary student prayer at football games. In none of these cases did the ACLU take the free exercise side, to my knowledge.
The two are not opposed. As manny points out, what the ACLU objects to is government exercise of religion via its subsidiary institutions such as public schools or government offices. The government does not have any right to free exercise of religion. People do, private organizations do, but the government is designed and intended to remain neutral on the subject of religion. So it’s absurd to say that the ACLU is somehow opposing free exercise by arguing on the basis of the establishment clause.
manny I am aware of the specifications of both pro-life and pro-choice debates. the statement that was made, however, was open IMHO, to the interpretation that ‘birth control’ (ie controling or limiting the number of births) would in this sense also include the option of abortion, a legal option in this country, and frankly one is not required to pass a litmus test of ‘appropriate reasons to have one’ in order to get one.
Regarding the other issue of health care providers refusing to provide certain types of health care that’s a whole other debate, as you note.
In addition, as december acknowledges later, other forms of generally recognized birth control may in fact work by not allowing a fertalized egg to attach (which is technically also an abortion).
Since he was, IMHO, ducking the GOP’s well known interference with female reproduction issues with the demand for proof, I felt it was appropriate to use the GOP’s position statement which clearly marks out certain areas of reproduction as things to fight against.
I know that it could have fed into the whole other gig, but oh well.
(keep in mind, too that there are some for whom the “right to choose” includes the right to choose abortion as a method of birth control - again the concept is while I may personally disagree or find it immoral, I haven’t the right to enforce my morality on you).
Well, as long as you’re just using it to beat up on december, OK! 
The ACLU is not partisan? Then why did it seek to overturn a democratically decided initiative regarding Affirmative Action? There aren’t many more rights more important that having one’s vote count, rather than have a bunch of judges legislate for you, yet when people didn’t vote the way the ACLU wanted them to, the ACLU essentially said “Well, so much for democracy. Let’s see if we can get what we want through lawyers”. They clearly chose a political position over a civil liberty. Not only are they paritsan in that they support Affirmative Action (which is not a legitimate “civil liberty”), but they show that support not merely through campaigning and lobbying, but also through subversion of democracy if necessary. Telling other people what to do is not a “civil liberty”.
Stoid:
Are you being facetious, or you genuinely unaware of the myriad of cases involving the First Am. that have been brought up?
Seeing as how pretty much every man is in the militia, that really isn’t relevant. Unless you think that it means that women should be allowed to use guns.
As understandle as any other piece of weaseling. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in the Second Am. which states that it only refers to militias. It says, and I quote, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” It doesn’t say “people who are in the militita”, it say “people”.
Oh, really? Could give give a quote in which it is stated to be a collective right?
Otto:
Neither does the Second Am. Do you really not comprehend the difference between an explanatory clause and a qualifying clause? Or are you just willfully ignoring the distinction to convince yourself that you’re right?
december
Cite?
How would the free exercise clause suuport the right of schools to have a moment of silence, or to have “voluntary” prayers?
The Ryan: *The ACLU is not partisan? Then why did it seek to overturn a democratically decided initiative regarding Affirmative Action? *
It would help if you let us know exactly what initiative you’re referring to here. If you mean the lawsuit against Prop. 209 in California, the chief reason the ACLU opposed it is because they considered it to violate the 14th Amendment.
There aren’t many more rights more important that having one’s vote count,[…]
Depends what you’re voting on, doesn’t it? After all, in the past voter majorities have democratically voted in favor of Jim Crow laws, anti-miscegenation laws, and various ordinances promoting government establishment of religion, all of which are now considered to violate very important rights. Similarly, the right of the people to “have their votes count” in enacting legislation to outlaw affirmative action policies do not outweigh the ones guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.
*Not only are they paritsan in that they support Affirmative Action (which is not a legitimate “civil liberty”), but they show that support not merely through campaigning and lobbying, but also through subversion of democracy if necessary. Telling other people what to do is not a “civil liberty”. *
This is all kind of vague and unconvincing. Can you tell us specifically which part(s) of the ACLU’s reasoning on what they perceived to be the unconstitutionality of Prop. 209 you disagree with, and why? Or if this is not the particular issue you were thinking of, can you give us some specific identification of the one you did mean?