Wading through elucidator’s sarcasm I am forced to ask what Ann Coulter, Vince Foster, or the liberal media have anything to do with this thread. You mock december’s Linda Tripp example of ACLU’s liberal tendancies, but how about responding to the rest of them?
The second ammendment issue alone is enough to convince me they are shooting somewhat left of center. People in this thread have made the argument that they just interpret the 2nd ammendment differently, citing thier rule #47. This is rediculous.
Lets say a conservative civil liberties group stated that their interpretation of the first ammendment was that there shall be no official state sponsored religion and that is all. So, forced prayer in school, no government jobs allowed for athiests, etc are no problem as long as there is no official state sponsored religion. You would swallow the argument that “they simply are defending a different interpretation of the ammendment”. C’mon, now.
december, what I’m taking issue with is your contention that their lack of assistance to Linda Tripp is attributable to a liberal bias. I do not disagree that the ACLU is, by and large, a left-of-center organization. But there is simply no evidence that the ACLU did not help Tripp because she was a Republican accusing a Democratic president, nor is there any evidence that the ACLU has assisted in comparable circumstances where the politics were reversed.
In other words, you’re pulling it out of your butt. Not an unusual phenomenon, of course, but it’s still good to call you on that stuff every once in a while.
minty – the NAACP Legal Defence Fund did not defend church-bomber Bobby Frank Cherry. It’s obvious that he never asked for their help, nor did they offer to defend him. It was simply obvious to everyone that the NAACP LDF is not in the business of defending people who bombed African-American churches. (duh!)
Some pedant might point out that the Cherry case doesn’t prove this principle. Furthermore, the pedant might point out that we have no knowledge about confidential meetings at the NAACP, so we don’t really know how and why they made their decision. Still, I am not embarassed to claim this as an example of the type of case the NAACP Legal Defence Fund does not handle.
Linda Tripp was about as despised by Democrats as Cherry was by African-Americans. It was obvious that an organization close to the Democratic party was not going to defend Tripp, especially because the ACLU could have given her a degree of moral credibility.
Polycarp, sorry to say that I am befuddled by your syllogism, due to its lack of quantifiers, like “all” or “some” or words like “always” or "sometimes. "
—Do they have the right to discriminate even if it is proved that they are discriminating not because it is part of their purpose to oppose homosexuality, but because some people with power just don’t like it?—
I think so: if they are a private organization, then they can control their membership, even if for reasons not supported by the government (or even their own current membership!), can’t they? I’m not entirely clear on this issue. But it seems valid to argue that, though extremely dissapointing. Scouts meant something to me, and attaining Eagle was a neat part of my childhood. I feel the leaders of the organization betrayed everything I had always assumed it stood for.
The Court found that the Scouts exists to desseminate values by being expressive: including the expression of example by controlling their membership.
It’s not entirely clear whether the Court would have ruled the same had Dale not been an outspoken homosexual activist, in that it seemed to agree that heterosexual dissenters the BSA’s policy were allowed to remain: “The presence of an avowed homosexual and gay rights activist in an as-
sistant scoutmaster’s uniform sends a distinctly different message from the presence of a heterosexual assistant scoutmaster who is on record as disagreeing with Boy Scouts policy.” So the scope of the decision may actually be less than it is made out to be.
It also noted that, while it had not made much of it’s anti-gay scoutmaster policy: it had been laid out and approved policy since 1978.
—If so, why did they even have to argue that opposing homosexuality was part of what the BSA stood for?—
Partially because of the ambiguity of who “the BSA” is. I don’t think the Court really addressed this issue at all, treating the national leaders as the BSA, period.
I would also guess that this would have serious implications for their use of public facilities. But in a sense, what the leadership says, and what the organization stands for, is one in the same.
Polycarp, I was trying to think of a way to flame you for this. But after looking at the ACLU web-site for a while I have come to the conclusion that you are right. Sort of.
I always thought the ACLU was an organization devoted to defending the COTUS. But, I got this from their site as the purpose of the organization:
They seem interested in Civil Liberties first, with the “Constitution and laws of the United States” as their ammunition to accomplish this goal.
If they were an organization devoted to the defense of the COTUS, they would seem rather right of center, IMHO. The Republicans always referring to the COTUS and appointing strict constitutionalist judges and such. But, if civil liberties are their primary concern, I am not surprised that they align themselves with Democrats more often.
From that same link look to the section on “What the bill of rights guarantees”.
From the section on the First Ammendment
Bolding mine. Certainly an interpreted take on the actual wording which is:
They then talk about equal protection under the law, rights to due process, and privacy.
And the Second, or Tenth Ammendments? (or their version of them?) Nowhere to be found on the page.
It appears to me that the ACLU is an agenda driven activist organization first. (whos agenda happens to favor liberal issues rather than conservative ones). And the defending the COTUS part doesn’t factor into their agenda at all. Except to use the COTUS as an argument for thier case when it agrees with them, and to ignore it when it doesn’t.
Well, I think that when arguing cases before the USSC and lower courts, they try to not completely ignore the Constitution. I mean, that just seems like a bad legal strategy.
To clarify: They ignore the parts of the constitution that they don’t agree with when making decisions about which cases to involve themselves in. Specifically, the second and tenth ammendments.
BTW, can anybody answer my post from way up on the top of the page about the case in RI? I still fail to see how it fits the objectives of the ACLU to try and end a father-daughter dance and a mother-son baseball game.
I suspect that Dennis Prager would consider the ACLU to be one of *“many groups and ideologies have a personal interest in denying that it is best for a child to be raised by, or even to start out life with, a father and mother.” *
In particular, he might well classify them in the category of "Those people, gay and straight, and the intimidating gay rights lobby who argue that gay equality demands the belief that two fathers or two mothers are just as wonderful for a child as one parent of each sex."
Interesting point, december, but the issue in most such cases is not a choice between two parents, one of each sex, and a parent and step-parent of the same sex. As you well know. It’s normally an attempt to characterize any same-sex relationship and those who enter into one as unfit to raise children. I’m firm for gay rights, but if I saw a gay couple whose particular lifestyle choices would be injurious to a child, I would do what is in my power to ensure that the child was provided with a safer environment, and hopefully with parental love in the bargain. However, I’d do exactly the same with a straight couple with similar poor lifestyle choices – and came quite close to being involved in an incident where I would have to do so, recently.
Well, yes and no. They are principally advocates for those civil liberties that appear guaranteed by the Constitution. This requires interpretation of the Constitution – which is not “judicial legislation” but the sworn duty of every judge. In any case whatsoever, he must decide in what way if at all the law applies to the case brought before him. Is this piece of paper a valid, enforceable contract, and if so, what legal recourses do the parties disputing it have? Did this accused person’s actions constitute the crime defined by the law under which he is charged? And so on. In particular, how does this case square with the supreme law of the land, i.e., the United States Constitution?
That requires interpretation. Bork was as much interpreting the Ninth Amendment as a nullity by refusing to accept that there are any rights which someone could advance as among the unenumerated rights which it guarantees shall not be abrogated by the listing of enumerated ones in Amendments I-VIII, as the liberal judges were in finding a right to travel and to relocate, a right to marry and to procreate, and a right to privacy as among those unenumerated ones. And the jurisprudence regarding the Fourteenth Amendment has found that “the rights and privileges of citizens of the United States” may include most of the Bill of Rights, but has also resulted in interpretations that are by no means liberal in modern parlance, ranging from the Slaughterhouse Cases to Bush v. Gore.
The Eighth Amendment prohibits “excessive bail or fines” and “cruel and unusual punishment.” What constitutes “excessive” and what constitutes “cruel and unusual”? More particularly, how, without interpretation, may one arrive at an answer?
Interesting, december. I didn’t think of the gay rights issue. The ACLU didn’t bring that up in that case, but I think it was clearly a part of thier agenda there.
Poly, I agree that much of what the ACLU stands for and what the COTUS says overlap. But, I always had the impression (until this thread came along) that the two were one and the same. I stand corrected. And, the ACLU (or it’s web-site anyway) doesn’t even claim this. I have just heard others many times refer to the ALCU this way.
I guess a similar, although more blatant, example would be someone refering to the NRA as a group devoted to the protection of the bill of rights. Well, the second ammendment is a part of the bill of rights, so that’s not really technically incorrect. But, it is dishonest. A more honest statement would be that the NRA is a group devoted to the freedom to bear arms.
Saying the ACLU is a group devoted to the protection of the constitution or the bill of rights is similarly dishonest. They are a group that promotes a wide agenda of issues from gay rights, to anti-discrimination, to free speech. Many of these issues happen to be in the COTUS, but defending the COTUS is not thier purpose.
