OK. I’lll look forward to your next response to that post, 3 years hence. 
Personally I’m supportive of the ACLU and generally agree with them.
I remember being quite disturbed with how many people who claimed to be supporters of Civil Liberties shit their pants in anger and squealed like babies when the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United that no the government doesn’t have the power to ban movies or books.
Thankfully, the ACLU was on the side of the angels on this one and hailed it as a triumph for free speech.
I suggest that it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not (and the poster acknowledges that he read this letter to the editor 47 years ago and can’t reproduce it here). The question was, “what do righties have against the ACLU?” What the poster who bumped the zombie thread has against the ACLU is that, at some time in the past, he read allegations that the ACLU, in its original charter, sought to destroy religion and Christianity, and that he believed it. I don’t, myself, think that that is true, and am pretty sure that it isn’t true, but he believed it was true, and that belief led him to be opposed to the ACLU.
I’m not sure why you think you need to explain that. Anyone reading his post can see that plain as day. So what? This isn’t a GQ thread where we’re looking for the factual answer-- it’s a GD thread where you’re supposed to present your case. The zombie bumper didn’t do that.
So you don’t agree with the well-written paragraph I posted?
I don’t even remember what it was about.
ACLU brainwashing erased Diogenes’ memory!! :eek:
Reply to Revtim: I like for the ACLU to do that. I just see it so rarely that I tend to think of it as damage control–toss something to the Christians every now and again so we can say we do defend all. More often, it is a threatening a school district with an expensive lawsuit, so that the (also anti-Christian) school officials will put pressure to bear down the line until it is on the shoulders of the little seven-year-old who brought the tracts to school, or wore the teeshirt, or did a book report on the Bible, or made Jesus her most influential person. For some reason, such expressions shall not be tolerated. You shake down little kids, emphasis on shake, and are proud of it, not ashamed. You act as if the deepest convictions of the hearts of such little kids are yours to prohibit, along with the speech about them. Is anyone telling you you’d better shut up, or else? You do this to us, you do this to children; this is not bull. It is the truth. It isn’t the hype; you do it.
I wish you didn’t, because I do want to support you. I do see the sharks from the right circling, using anything that comes along as an excuse to co-opt us, against our will. And I don’t see working for your downfall, because (if I go to your website, for instance) I do see you defending people who ought to be defended. I’m not even ungrateful to you for this, although I credit the providence of God more. But the subject was, What do the righties have against the ACLU? why do they think it is anti-Christian? I answered that question honestly, although I am not a rightie. Maybe only card-carrying righties were invited to reply: those who are easier to dialectically manipulate and neutralize.
Sounds like standard right wing persecution fantasies to me. Like the students who pray around flagpoles to defy the evil liberal anti-god school’s “ban” on prayer, despite there being no actual rule against prayer. Just forcing it on people. But they desperately need to feel oppressed, even when all that’s happening is that they are being kept from oppressing others.
And you still haven’t provided evidence that they or the schools in question are “anti-God”. Or that these alleged incidents happened, or the details of what actually happened; I’m not going to take such obvious regurgitated right wing Christian propaganda very seriously without evidence.
You certainly come across like a “rightie”, whether you regard yourself as one or not.
Nashville Banner, circa 1964 (65?)
Liberal paper: Nashville Tennessean, same dates. If I can get myself to get down to the main library and endure the microfilm-induced migraine, I will see what the papers say, when I find it. I was going to do microfilm research last year but didn’t have glasses to do it. Try that if you are nearsighted. Perhaps the Tennessean did protest and I forgot, or I missed it. You did not ask for proof of anything. I understand that making unsubstantiated charges are not good, as bearing false witness is not good. That is part of the reason I withheld the papers, and why I admitted that I not only couldn’t prove what I remembered but that it was nearly fifty years ago.
You don’t like to hear from anybody who isn’t singing with the choir. Your little straw tarbaby works well for you as long as we are the villains of your imagination. We “don’think for ourselves.” Sure.
It’s not often that I agree with Der Trihs’s posts, but I agree 100% with the one, above.
You really are going to generate nothing but derision unless you back up your “opinions” with cites.
Dunno if this will surprise anybody or not, but I applied for a job with the ACLU several years ago. It was a management level position, and I had no management experience at the time, so I didn’t get the job. If I had, I’d have had no problem working for them.
From the ACLU site’
The right to practice religion or no religion at all, is among the most fundamental of the rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. The ACLU works to ensure that this essential freedom is protected by keeping the government out of religion.
Seems like a concept even the righties would love. But when it conflicts with their fundie religion , they throw off their political and legal logic and replace it with some self serving religious one. Then they get angry at those who actually work at keeping religion and government separate.
See, I think part of the problem is that you see these people as anti-Christian which most likely isn’t the case.
Most people, whether their atheists, from a different religion, or even Christians, have nothing against people practicing their religion, no matter whether it’s Christianity being practiced or some other religion.
What offends people is having to be subjected to the religion through force. It does not, however, make them anti-Christian.
This child objected to a prayer being said during graduation. This is something that has been litigated time and again and found to be illegal. He stood up for his rights and was ostracized and threatened with bodily harm because he chose to stand up for his rights. THIS is the reason why religion has no place in school and government, because it leads to situations like this. The school, rather than respected the law and this student, turned this into a situation where he had to fear for his safety.
Because even though the thread is in GD, it’s really a GQ. From the OP:
When you get a mod to move it there, I’ll agree. Until then, it’s a debate.
And did you even read what you quoted? "Does anybody want to defend the meme that they’re anti-Christian? " That doesn’t mean give us your fabricated conspiracy theories. It means “defend” as in offer proof.
When it comes down to it, the answer to the OP (from 3 years ago) is pretty simple:
The right hates the ACLU because the ACLU opposes many of the infringements on freedom that the right likes to infringe on.
Its not that they are against the ACLU for defending civil rights, but like many moderate Republicans sick of their party, they want them to defend only the rights they care about and not the ones they don’t. In this conversation, the right would love for the ACLU to defend Christian rights but not Muslim rights, to defend the freedom to pray in school but not the freedom to not have prayer forced on them, and the right to protest in front of abortion clinics but not the right to protest in front of big corporations
To righties, they never think of the obvious: if they want to have the ACLU off their backs, they should stop trying to force their beliefs on everyone else
But there’s not much to debate. The Religious Right wants prayer in schools. The ACLU is against that. The Religious Right wants to end abortion, the ACLU wants to defend the right to have abortions. The Religious Right wants to prevent gay marriage and gay civil rights protections, the ACLU wants gays to marry and be protected by anti-discrimination laws. The Religious Right wants to ban pornography, the ACLU wants to protect the right to sell or watch porn. Most of the positions the religious right supports, the ACLU opposes and vice versa. Why wouldn’t they dislike them?
Sure there is. Your very first statement is debatable as to what it means to be “anti-Christian”, especially since the ACLU doesn’t want any prayer from any religion in school. Your second statement only applies to some Christians. Most Americans area Christian, and most Americans are pro-choice.
But getting back to the OP, the right doesn’t like change. That’s why they call themselves “conservatives”. The ACLU is out to “upset” the status quo and discover all sorts of new rights that make us a different society. SSM is a perfect example-- it’s a huge upset to the status quo, and requires a new kind of thinking about marriage. The right doesn’t want our society to change (generally speaking).
But they often get use to it, eventually. Few people on “the right” who were born after the 1960s would advocate a return to Jim Crow laws. Perhaps where SSM is legal, there will be “conservatives” who grew up with it being legal, and who will find some other change that they want to fight against.
So “religious right” = Christian? Opposing the religious right doesn’t make you anti-Christian, plenty of Christians don’t like them any more than non-Christians do.