# What do righties have against the ACLU? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 7, 2008, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-righties-have-against-the-aclu/444257 "2008-04-07T01:02:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 18
**Author:** ![focusonz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9dc877/32.png) [@focusonz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/focusonz)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2008, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-righties-have-against-the-aclu/444257/341 "2008-04-11T12:33:45Z")
[QUOTE=Carson O’Genic] Please explain your meaning here. [/QUOTE] Fudge. I know nothing about Bush’s initiative and have no more time. It was not my intent to raise the ire of our Arabic (Muslim) friends. Those cites are knee jerk reactions of a fearful nation post 911. When a wolf is killing your sheep, well you round up all the sheep and shear their wool to find the wolf then you excise it from your herd. And I assume most of the wolves have been rounded up in America (bad guys) so that time is past. My point is we are where we are. Totally secular schools are devoid of any of the richness and passions and compassion that beliefs give to our lives. Also, language or cultural based schools will just tend to stratify the melting pot which is America. Those that want to learn Arabic in America will attend the school because , for some of them if not most, it will be a reminder of the culture they were forced to leave behind and really in their hearts they didn’t want to. Language, culture, religion, are all intertwined. Be happy!. America is a grand experiment. ---
**Author:** ![mcfirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/90db22/32.png) [@mcfirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mcfirefly)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-righties-have-against-the-aclu/444257/342 "2011-06-02T03:38:05Z")
I am not a righty, or a whitey-tighty. I am, however, a born-again Christian, and the ACLU has a serious agenda against belief in the Bible and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Their court cases would strongly suggest it, but my conviction that this is true comes from a long time ago, when I supported them (as a child of 12) as defenders of the rights of everyone and the principle of equal protection under the law. Even though I witnessed the time of their cases against school prayer, I believed that they were protecting the Constitution, even if, I’d admit, a little too zealously against the “religious.” It was a matter of principal. A particular case, I don’t remember the details, was being fought out in our local newspapers, including in their letters columns. I followed this, strongly supporting the ACLU position at first, and deploring the attitudes of their opponents. It didn’t hurt that the ACLU were the hip side, although it also made it more important that I examined my conscience for my true motives. Sometime into the battle, the conservative paper, in a column or a letter, I can’t remember which, published what they said was the original charter of the ACLU. In it, Baldwin (I assume) said something to the effect that they would use the establishment clause and the issue of freedom of speech of enemies of Biblical religion together, to marginalize it to the point that nobody who clung to belief would dare speak about it in public, and within a few years it would be eliminated from polite society altogether. I understood that people like Baldwin and his followers considered this a good thing, progress, and since I had seen Inherit the Wind, it was easy to imagine him and Mencken snickering over the fast one they’d played on the Christian boobacracy. Well, I had bent over backwards to support this “principled” group, but I realized I couldn’t support this, because trying to force the truth of God, and the Good News of Jesus Christ, which is not an oppressor, but the most important liberator, out if the world was really evil. And even though I almost always have supported their other cases, since this agenda seemed to be the one closest to their founder’s heart as well as the current guys, I’ve never been able to really support them since. It was as if I had seen through them a little too much. But, this is the thing: I can’t find that original charter anywhere. It is not online that I’ve been able to tell. If the one I’d read in the afternoon paper had been untrue, wouldn’t the liberal morning paper have protested so? Now, this was 47 years ago, and obviously I can’t clearly remember exactly what was said, yet I am sure of the gist of it, yet can’t prove it. So this is hearsay and can’t be anything else; I’d provide documentation if I could find it. This I remember about that newspaper freedom of speech/establishment clause controversy, too: the “last word” was when a letter writer asked, “What about my right _not to hear_?” And for most letter writers, that seemed to say it all; at least no more letters about that particular controversy were published. Nuff said. But, if the establishment clause, freedom of speech and the “right not to hear” were all on the anti-God side, the pro-God people had neither free speech (violates the “right not to hear”) but had no corresponding right not to hear, either. Had the ACLU, the newspaper’s editor and the ACLU-friendly letter writers noticed and cared about the inequity, I’d have been able to at least retain some respect for them, despite Baldwin’s nefarious intentions. But they just swept it under the rug, one for us and zero for the Christian boobacrats. With no ACLU, there would be no one to defend many important rights cases. But with their consistently anti-Christ bias and their cynical ploy to deep six the witness of the Bible, I can’t support them. I wish I could, but what they seek to destroy is even more important than what they defend. If they and their many allies on the left hadn’t seen it as great pragmatic-Yankee wisdom to drive out the Jesus believers, would there be a religious right today? I believe that the hypocritical right would have attracted a number of unsaved traditionalists, but the really believing wouldn’t have been inclined to stay if they’d once taken a look around and seen what they were being unequally-yoked with. Even today if you talk to genuine believers, they express a lot more doubt about the side they are supposed to be so one with. It is the ones who think they own the Christians who do most of the public talking, which is, of course, what Baldwin wanted. I have many times wanted the ease again of picking a side and sticking with it, but for me, God was more important than politics. Baldwin might as well have been Albert Pike for that. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-righties-have-against-the-aclu/444257/343 "2011-06-02T03:50:09Z")
Assuming you didn’t just reanimate this thread and abandon it, I’ll answer you. Your position has some important errors. For one, we aren’t talking about the “right not to hear”; we are talking about the right to not be forced to hear. Prayer is legal at schools; what isn’t legal is official prayer, because that’s forced prayer and because it tends to lead to other forms of persecution as well. You are also wrong in equating opposing prayer in schools with being anti-God; many believers object to their children being forced to pray to the wrong religion or to being harassed or assaulted for not doing so, and oppose school prayer for that reason. And some believers consider such a public show of prayer offensive or sinful. Nor is the left anti-religious, unfortunately. All in all, you appear to be indulging in standard Christian pseudo-martyrdom, complaining that you are being oppressed because you aren’t allowed to oppress others as freely as you like. ---
**Author:** ![Randy\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ee7513/32.png) [@Randy\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Randy_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-righties-have-against-the-aclu/444257/344 "2011-06-02T03:52:53Z")
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board, **mcfirefly**. This thread is an old one. It is generally frowned upon to add a new post to a very old thread. Some posters who participated have left us in the 3+ years since this topic first came up. It’s certainly not against the rules, but sometimes people may see that this thread is active, not notice the date, assume it’s new content, and start posting responses to what people said years ago. So if you really think it’s helpful to post to a very old thread, it’s a good practice to make a note of that in your post, so that people have some warning. Again, welcome to the SDMB. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-righties-have-against-the-aclu/444257/345 "2011-06-02T06:17:38Z")
I’ll defend the ACLU just because mcfirefly’s reasons for opposing it offend me on several levels. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-righties-have-against-the-aclu/444257/346 "2011-06-02T07:18:09Z")
Since this thread has come up again, I’d suggest Garry Willis’s “Under God: Religion and American Politics”, which includes a discussion as to why the religious right dislikes the ACLU. > [@](#): > > When George Bush accused Dukakis of belonging to the ACLU, this struck most people in the press as the equivalent of discovering that Dukakis was on the board of a local museum. In the secular press, the ACLU is covered mainly for its maverick defense of unlikely candidates for civil rights, like the Ku Klux Klan. But on the right, the ACLU is considered a very prominent agent in twentieth-century history. Look for anything that has gone wrong in “Christian America,” and the ACLU has been making it go wrong, according to the evangelical Right. The ACLU created “the Scopes trial,” which broke America’s leading evangelical, Williams Jennings Bryan. It has been more affective than the Communist party precisely because it look more acceptable. It is more pervasive than groups that deal with only one issue (like the National Abortion Rights Action League) or one profession (like the National Education Association) or one constituency (like the National Organization for Women) or foreign policy (lie the Council on Foreign Relations). It is strong in single areas, but its influence extends to the whole range of political issues that matter most to dedicated evangelical Christians-abortion, private education, prayer in schools, gay rights, pornography, the _Miranda_ laws, the teaching of evolution, testing for AIDS, capital punishment. > > Some Christian activists know the ACLU only from its involvement in whatever issue concerns them most (e.g. abortion). But the better informed and the more active such people are, the more comprehensive the ACLU appears to them, the more coordinated with all parts of the effort to rid America of religion. Even poorly educated believers tend to know more about the ACLU and its founder, Roger Baldwin, than do more secular college graduates. (In the same way, right-wingers otherwise ill-informed had a surprisingly detailed knowledge of all the charges against Dr. King that were circulated for years by J. Edgar Hoover.) Thus, in concentric circles out from the core of religious hard-liners, ACLU has become a swearword for many only vaguely on the right. Edwin Meese, Reagan’s White House counselor and later his attorney general, called the organization “a criminals’ lobby”-a charge that seemed extreme to the secular press but was only a mild version of what is said about the group by right-wingers. When Joseph Scheidler, the antiabortion activist, claimed that his free speech rights had often been infringed, I asked him if he ever thought of appealing to the ACLU. He acted as if I had suggested an alliance with the devil. “I would not accept their help if they offered it.” (The ACLU _has_ offered help to antiabortion activists, some of whom have accepted its services.) He then goes on to point out that, while the official position of the ACLU neither favors nor opposes religion, but just calls for separation of church and state there are some actions by the ACLU that do seem to be opposed to religiosity in American life, and that there are ACLU leaders who have called the religious Right the enemy and that the American government is improperly influenced by religious values. ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-righties-have-against-the-aclu/444257/347 "2011-06-02T07:34:06Z")
There have been times when the ACLU positions itself on something and I groan inwardly. But it’s not a government-funded group. It’s a private group that has done quite a bit of good so why should I care if they push themselves on a few select issues? I think whatever they’ve done on behalf of immigrants, gays, and criminal law (especially as it pertains to teens) negates them flipping out about the ten commandments or insisting that people have the right to post pictures of mutilated fetuses outside my office window. The ACLU isn’t the end all be all and they don’t win every case. Besides, there are plenty of religious and conservative opposition groups. I rather appreciate the ACLU…I was a member for awhile, even. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-righties-have-against-the-aclu/444257/348 "2011-06-02T11:58:48Z")
How can anyone argue with a post in Franklin Gothic Medium? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-righties-have-against-the-aclu/444257/349 "2011-06-02T13:33:39Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > How can anyone argue with a post in Franklin Gothic Medium? Yes, it’s the font of wisdom. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-righties-have-against-the-aclu/444257/350 "2011-06-02T13:35:23Z")
> [@mcfirefly](#): > > I am not a righty, or a whitey-tighty. I am, however, a born-again Christian, and the ACLU has a serious agenda against belief in the Bible and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Absolute and utter bullshit. They frequently fight _FOR_ the rights of people to practice and express their religion. > **[ACLU Defense of Religious Practice and Expression | American Civil Liberties...](https://www.aclu.org/aclu-defense-religious-practice-and-expression)** If they are “against belief in the Bible and the gospel of Jesus Christ”, why would they do this? There’s a huge difference between religious expression that can be seen as a government endorsement of religion, and personal expression of religion. The ACLU fights against the former, and fights _for_ the latter. This difference is either glossed over by the right-wing media to use the ACLU as a convenient “OMG they are coming to take your Bibles away!!!” scare tactic, or perhaps they are just too simple to understand it. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-righties-have-against-the-aclu/444257/351 "2011-06-02T15:08:03Z")
> [@](#): > > Sometime into the battle, the conservative paper, in a column or a letter, I can’t remember which, published what they said was the original charter of the ACLU. In it, Baldwin (I assume) said something to the effect that they would use the establishment clause and the issue of freedom of speech of enemies of Biblical religion together, to marginalize it to the point that nobody who clung to belief would dare speak about it in public, and within a few years it would be eliminated from polite society altogether. So, we’re supposed to just take your word that this conspiracy theory is true? Uh-uh. You gotta do a LOT better around here than that. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-righties-have-against-the-aclu/444257/352 "2011-06-02T16:02:59Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > So, we’re supposed to just take your word that this conspiracy theory is true? Uh-uh. You gotta do a LOT better around here than that. Could I suggest that, regardless of whether the conspiracy theory or the Baldwin quote is true or not, the fact that there are those who believe it is true explains their dislike for the ACLU. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-righties-have-against-the-aclu/444257/353 "2011-06-02T16:06:44Z")
> [@](#): > > So, we’re supposed to just take your word that this conspiracy theory is true? Not just his word, but an unidentified and purportedly biased newspaper. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-righties-have-against-the-aclu/444257/354 "2011-06-02T16:15:09Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Could I suggest that, regardless of whether the conspiracy theory or the Baldwin quote is true or not, the fact that there are those who believe it is true explains their dislike for the ACLU. Sure. But the poster who bumped this zombie thread is claiming it is true, which simply isn’t going to fly here unless we see this double secret super duper long form charter statement that was referenced in his post. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-righties-have-against-the-aclu/444257/355 "2011-06-02T16:53:15Z")
> [@Revtim](#): > > This difference is either glossed over by the right-wing media to use the ACLU as a convenient “OMG they are coming to take your Bibles away!!!” scare tactic, or perhaps they are just too simple to understand it. That would be terrible. Without Bibles, they would be forced to think. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-righties-have-against-the-aclu/444257/356 "2011-06-02T17:24:31Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Except that it is. The Supreme Court is full of shit on this one. The Court is shamefully loathe to enforce the Establishment Clause the way it should. I know that technically, if they say it’s legal it’s legal, but the ACLU was still legally correct in challenging that and the Court just pussed out on making the right ruling. Actually, the job of the Supreme Court is _precisely_ to interpret the Constitution. Each court and each generation is simply _interpreting_ as it is their Constitutional duty to do. If the interpretation changes over the years, that is only a function of each new Justice and each new iteration of the Supreme Court. In some cases, previous courts have been wrong or dishonest or disingenuous or bound by generational prejudice and have had to be corrected by more enlightened successors. Right? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-righties-have-against-the-aclu/444257/357 "2011-06-02T17:28:12Z")
**Bricker** : Do you realize that this is a zombie thread, that the post you quoted from \*\*Dio \*\*was from 2008, and that you already responded (in 2008) to that exact post? ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-righties-have-against-the-aclu/444257/358 "2011-06-02T17:37:14Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > **Bricker** : Do you realize that this is a zombie thread, that the post you quoted from \*\*Dio \*\*was from 2008, and that you already responded (in 2008) to that exact post? Ah, but did he respond in the same way he did 2 years ago? I know I hate to contradict myself in zombie threads… 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-righties-have-against-the-aclu/444257/359 "2011-06-02T17:45:55Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > **Bricker** : Do you realize that this is a zombie thread, that the post you quoted from \*\*Dio \*\*was from 2008, and that you already responded (in 2008) to that exact post? Yes. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-righties-have-against-the-aclu/444257/360 "2011-06-02T17:51:52Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Actually, the job of the Supreme Court is _precisely_ to interpret the Constitution. Each court and each generation is simply _interpreting_ as it is their Constitutional duty to do. If the interpretation changes over the years, that is only a function of each new Justice and each new iteration of the Supreme Court. In some cases, previous courts have been wrong or dishonest or disingenuous or bound by generational prejudice and have had to be corrected by more enlightened successors. > > Right? “Ceremonial Deism” is a perfect example of the Court being dishonest and deciding to ignore the Constitution instead of interpret it. You’re respomding to a three year old post, by the way. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-righties-have-against-the-aclu/444257.md?page=17) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-righties-have-against-the-aclu/444257.md?page=19)