Actually your summary is disturbing - you do know this a board dedicated to dispelling ignorance?
You made these allegations:
‘The ACLU is basically an anti-religion lobbying group. They seem to focus most of their energy on regularly attacking the boy scouts because they don’t like the fact that they don’t allow gay scout leaders or openly gay members and focus on religion.
Now that it’s holiday season, your ACLU dontations will probably go towards their struggle to ban Christmas decorations from shopping malls and town commons across the country.’
Other posters gave cites to prove you wrong.
Of course you are welcome to your opinion (and the ACLU will help defend your free speech rights!).
But you have not proven any of your original allegations.
Instead of doing so, you resort to insults. :rolleyes:
This discussion is becoming heated–which is fine and good–but don’t allow your passions to overtake your good sense. By all means thrash out the issues but don’t attach personalties to any of it.
IOW, don’t ruin a good thread by flaming. Won’t be tolerated, y’know.
Just a reminder…
I requested and received ACLU membership as a Christmas gift a few years ago - right after the patriot act. But I didn’t renew because immediately after I joined I started getting MASSES of solicitation letters from organizations I had never heard of before. Since they were the only new folks who had my address (and interests), it seemed clear to me that they sold their mailing list.
If it was email it would be spam. I figured that they made enough off me to cover for a few more years, and I still get all their emails anyway. I might join again if they had a ‘do not sell my name’ option, but I’m still ticked off enough that I haven’t looked.
That’s just my experience, clearly others don’t seem to mind as much. Or were already getting that much mail anyway. Or something.
I’d definitely contribute to the ACLU, even though I don’t always agree with them (they sometimes don’t go far enough, IMO). But the way things are looking right now, we need at least one large, powerful, and well-known organization to stand up for individual rights.
I joined the day after the election - sent them and Amnesty International money I can ill afford. Haven’t gotten my cards yet, though. While I don’t always agree with everything both organizations do, that would be true of anything, and they both do a pretty good job of allowing you to just get updates on things you want to hear about. I think they do good work and that they’re a good place to send your money if you’re concerned about your personal freedoms and civil liberties.
IMHO or not, I demand a cite with proof on this accusation. The reason is that I have spent time in a number of threads on a number of boards dealing with this allegation, first educating myself (with the help of weirddave, mouthbreeder, yosemite (IIRC), and several others), and then attempting to help others’ ignorance.
The ACLU is not anti-religion. They’re anti-establishment-of-religion. You know, like using your tax money to put up religious artifacts, or conducting prayers at publicly-funded mandatory events like public school graduations, etc. They’re quite pro-religion when some officious asswipe has decided that conformity or his misunderstanding of the First Amendment requires that persons in his custody (like schoolkids) are not permitted the free exercise of their religion.
As one might have gathered from the name, it’s a Union of people who defend the Civil Liberties of Americans – which includes freedom from the establishment of religious customs and paraphenalia using the public facilities and purse, and the freedom to express one’s religion without let or hindrance from public officials.
I’m bowing out of this discussion. We’re in IMHO. It’s clear that I’m not allowed to have an opinion that is different that the liberal norm here on the SDMB, at least on this subject.
The OP could request that this thread be moved to GD, but he/she has not. I’m certainly not going to open up a thread on the subject. I simply don’t feel up to being attacked by two dozen posters this week.
For the record, I’m an athiest who is a supporter of the seperation of church and state clause of the first ammendment.
No, what’s clear is that you don’t know the difference between “having an opinion” (“I don’t like the ACLU’s attacks on the Boy Scouts”) and “stating things as fact that are not supported by the evidence” (Debaser: “The ACLU is basically an anti-religion lobbying group.”). In the Chicago Tribune this week, there was a front-page article about questions about a school’s holiday program not containing any carols about Jesus, and the fact of the matter is that the ACLU is in favor of those being included in public schools’ holiday programs as long as Christianity is not being promoted over other religions. The article mentioned a statement that the ACLU and various Christian organizations had signed off on regarding this kind of issue.
Not a problem, Debaser; I’m a touch antsy on the subject because of how often your assertion is put forward as “fact” by people who haven’t bothered to pay attention to the facts. I recommend going to the ACLU website and looking under religion to find out exactly where they do stand, if you’re at all interested.
That said, “fighting ignorance” includes IMHO – to be opposed to Harry Potter books because you think Rowling is an execrable writer is valid; to be opposed to them “because they promote Satanism through picturing magic as good” (I have actually seen this POV expressed elsewhere) is absurd.
I find some ACLU stances to be ones that I cannot in good conscience hold, but in general I support them morally and would do so financially if I had the means.
You have every right to an opinion that “doesn’t conform to the liberal norm” – so long as it’s founded on the facts, which are not subject to personal opinion. And I would hope that many of the freethinking liberals here would back your right to do so. I certainly would. I challenged you, not because you don’t have a right to form an opinion about the ACLU, but because the opinion you expressed was not borne out by their actions. Tell me that they’ve overly zealous in calling every personal expression of religious sentiment by a government official a violation of the Establishment Clause, and I’d be tempted to agree. Tell me that they’re wilfully anti-religious, and I’ll argue with you – and win, because the facts are on my side.
While I don’t always agree with everything both organizations do, that would be true of anything, and they both do a pretty good job of allowing you to just get updates on things you want to hear about. I think they do good work and that they’re a good place to send your money if you’re concerned about your personal freedoms and civil liberties.