RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Why the Hatred for the ACLU?

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r3x29yz4a said:

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wannabuyamonkey said:
Oh, that was a compliment, by the way. Feel free to quote it in your sig if you wish.

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Thanks man, that means a lot. If it means anything to you I never thought you were a pedophile either.

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r3x29yz4a said:

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Pariah said:

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magicjay38 said:

2. "You shall have no other gods besides Me...Do not make a sculpted image or any likeness of what is in the heavens above..."
This one specifically would violate the constitution as it is a government monument saying Yaweh is THE god, and that any other religion (or lack of religion) is invalidated. That specifically violates Church/State separation.

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Ummm, where exactly in the bill of rights or the constitution does there say that there is seperation of church and state????

You answer me that and I'll let you have my password....

It doesn't..only the no laws for or against religion thing....

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Pariah said:
Ummm, where exactly in the bill of rights or the constitution does there say that there is seperation of church and state????

You answer me that and I'll let you have my password....

It doesn't..only the no laws for or against religion thing....

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wikipedia

In the United States, separation of church and state is governed by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and by legal precedents, some quite controversial, interpreting that clause. Many other democratic governments around the world have similar clauses in their respective constitutions. The actual term, "separation of church and state", does not appear in the constitution, but rather comes from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to a group identifying themselves as the Danbury Baptists. Ulysses S. Grant also called for Americans to "Keep the church and state forever separate."

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Thomas Jefferson:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

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Regarding religion, the first amendment to the US Constitution states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" both these clauses, known as the "establishment clause" and the "free exercise clause" respectively, are significant. To give perspective, there was a great conservation of language in the Bill of Rights; the intention was to avoid creating loopholes, while still providing a buffer between the Legislature and the most basic rights of the people. It is significant, then, that there are two clauses where one would suffice, were the intention only to prevent religious establishment or only to protect free exercise.

At the time of the passage of the Bill of Rights, several states had established churches. For example, in 1854 the State supreme court of Maine declared that the local school board had the right to expel a 15 year old girl for refusing to read aloud a portion of the King James translation of the Bible to her class; her family's religion required her to read only the Douay Catholic translation of the Bible. [3] All of the early official state churches were disestablished by the 1820s, including the Congregationalist establishment in Danbury Baptists. It is commonly accepted that, under the doctrine of Incorporation - which uses the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as the vehicle by which the protections and restrictions of the Bill of Rights are applied to the states - they could not be reestablished today. (Justice Thomas has occasionally made note of a view, held by a small number of constitutional scholars, that the states could still establish official religions today; under this view, the establishment clause cannot be incorporated under the Fourteenth Amendment, because under its arcane wording, it is a "hands-off" directive aimed solely at Congress. Others take the view that so long as religion is established by the government, "establishment of religion" is "establishment of religion" no matter whether Congress is directly involved.)

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Prior to the inclusion of the Bill of Rights, the only mention of religious freedom in the Constitution was a clause forbidding any "religious test" for government employees. This has been called the "no religious test" clause, and is found at the end of Article VI, Section 3 (the final clause of the original Constitution save only for the Ratification Clause stating under what conditions the new Constitution would be deemed to be valid and in effect), which reads in part "but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or trust under the United States."

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The Tripoli Treaty of 1796 between the United States and the Barbary States, specifically stated that "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion". Many are of the view that containing paragraph (known as Article 11), which was written in a document endorsed both by the Congress of the time and by then-president John Adams, taken in context with similar writings of the founding fathers, supports the idea of a secular state. It is of note that the document was revised in 1805 to exclude Article 11.

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The phrase "separation of church and state" became a definitive part of Establishment Clause jurisprudence in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947). Everson also was the first case to interpret the Clause as imposing a restraint on the states as well as the federal government, based upon the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

In 1962, the Supreme Court banned from public schools all public prayers and religious readings done for religious purposes. The Supreme Court continued to allow private prayer. As such, any teacher, faculty, or student can pray in school, in accordance with their own religion. However, they may not lead such prayers in class, or in other "official" school settings such as assemblies or programs. Even "non-sectarian" teacher-led prayers are not allowed, e.g. "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country," which was part of the prayer required by the New York State Board of Regents prior to the decision of the Warren Court in Engel v. Vitale.

The court noted that it "is a matter of history that this very practice of establishing governmentally composed prayers for religious services was one of the reasons which caused many of our early colonists to leave England and seek religious freedom in America."

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the G-man said:
Actually, Ray, all those things you cited are people, including Jefferson, INTERPRETATING the constitution to mean there is a "separation between church and state."

However, as Pariah noted, that phrase itself does not actually appear anywhere in the First Amendment.

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the G-man said:
However, as Pariah noted, that phrase itself does not actually appear anywhere in the First Amendment.

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the G-man said:
Actually, Ray, all those things you cited are people, including Jefferson, INTERPRETATING

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the G-man said:
Actually, James Madison wrote the First Amendment, not Jefferson.

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"Mr. Kahn, a former investment company manager from Forest Hills, said what moved him to action was the ACLU's decision to endorse a bill that would regulate advertising by counseling centers operated by groups that oppose legalized abortion.

"That got me because I'm a firm believer in content-neutral defense of free speech. The fact that the ACLU would abandon that position was an earthquake," Mr. Kahn said. "The organization has lost its way."

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the G-man said:
The ACLU has recently tried to censor its board members from speaking out when they disagree with ACLU policy.

This is a good example of why some of us hate the ACLU. They claim to believe in free speech for everyone. However, as demonstrated here, they are actually only for certain opinions.

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The ACLU is arguing before a federal appeals court that the United States is funding AIDS prevention unconstitutionally.

Specifically, they argue that having a ban on funds to organizations that promote commercial sex work inhibits free speech. It should be no surprise that the ACLU is in bed with those who want to legalize prostitution.

In the summer of 2003, Operator Predator was launched by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agency. The investigation has targeted individuals who make and consume child pornography worldwide. Because much of this stuff is manufactured overseas and shipped to America, ICE agents took the lead in tracking down the bad guys in the USA.

According to ICE agents, one of those who used a credit card to purchase child porn is attorney Charles Rust-Tierney, the former president of the American Civil Liberties Union in Virginia. Tierney was arrested and charged on Feb. 23.

One of the images Tierney was in possession of showed a little girl tied up and screaming while being violently raped.

Tierney, 51, is a well-known figure in the Washington, D.C. area and strenuously fought against limits on Internet access in libraries.

The ACLU in Virginia successfully blocked any filtering of objectionable material in Loudon County libraries.

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the G-man said:
Bill O'Reilly:

In the summer of 2003, Operator Predator was launched by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agency. The investigation has targeted individuals who make and consume child pornography worldwide. Because much of this stuff is manufactured overseas and shipped to America, ICE agents took the lead in tracking down the bad guys in the USA.

According to ICE agents, one of those who used a credit card to purchase child porn is attorney Charles Rust-Tierney, the former president of the American Civil Liberties Union in Virginia. Tierney was arrested and charged on Feb. 23.

One of the images Tierney was in possession of showed a little girl tied up and screaming while being violently raped.

Tierney, 51, is a well-known figure in the Washington, D.C. area and strenuously fought against limits on Internet access in libraries.

The ACLU in Virginia successfully blocked any filtering of objectionable material in Loudon County libraries.

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MisterJLA said:

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the G-man said:
Bill O'Reilly:

In the summer of 2003, Operator Predator was launched by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agency. The investigation has targeted individuals who make and consume child pornography worldwide. Because much of this stuff is manufactured overseas and shipped to America, ICE agents took the lead in tracking down the bad guys in the USA.

According to ICE agents, one of those who used a credit card to purchase child porn is attorney Charles Rust-Tierney, the former president of the American Civil Liberties Union in Virginia. Tierney was arrested and charged on Feb. 23.

One of the images Tierney was in possession of showed a little girl tied up and screaming while being violently raped.

Tierney, 51, is a well-known figure in the Washington, D.C. area and strenuously fought against limits on Internet access in libraries.

The ACLU in Virginia successfully blocked any filtering of objectionable material in Loudon County libraries.

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Your private message inbox is full.

Karl wanted me to tell you...

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Uschi said:
the ACLU protects NAMBLA. I know more than two men who were raped before they turned 10 years old by this one vile bastard. NAMBLA is the most horrid organization in America, except ACLU is worse for protecting them.

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Consider its intervention in a successful federal court challenge to an unconstitutional speech code at Georgia Tech, brought by the Alliance Defense Fund in 2006 on behalf of two conservative religious students.

The ACLU of Georgia filed an amicus brief proposing [an] "antiharassment" policy that included a prohibition on "injurious communications . . . directed toward an individual because of their characteristics or beliefs."

In other words: Students should be punished for sharply criticizing or satirizing each other's beliefs if their remarks are deemed "injurious."

The ACLU was even AWOL in one of the most visible and frightening free-speech controversies in recent years--the Muhammad cartoons, which many condemned as "hate speech." When Muslim groups violently protested the cartoons (first published in the Danish press), when American newspapers declined to publish them for fear of reprisals, and when the U.S. State Department condemned their publication--the ACLU exercised its right to remain silent. In fact, its press office actually advised ducking questions about the cartoons

Why did the ACLU avoid issuing a loud and clear public statement decrying violent efforts to suppress the Muhammad cartoons? Its silence may have reflected growing sympathy among ACLU leaders and supporters for restricting what many liberals condemn as hate speech. "Take hate speech," Mr. Romero remarked to the New York Times in May 2006. "While believing in free speech, we do not believe in or condone speech that attacks minorities."

Liberal sympathy for restricting hate speech may also explain the failure of the New York Civil Liberties Union to oppose the New York City Council's recent, symbolic moratorium on use of the n-word....If the City Council passed a symbolic resolution denouncing flag burning or criticizing the president, I'd bet my yearly contribution to the ACLU that [they] would oppose it vociferously.

Finally, the ACLU has affirmatively supported legislative restrictions on speech it does not like, even when it is clearly political.

[For example], the national board is seriously considering adopting a policy on commercial speech that would support restrictions on advertising by nonprofit antiabortion clinics.

This is not the same organization that once took pride in its costly, principled decision to defend the rights of neo-Nazis to march in a community of Holocaust survivors in Skokie, Ill. Of course the ACLU hasn't definitively abandoned its defense of speech: Large, national organizations change incrementally. But people should no longer depend on the ACLU to defend what they preach (especially at a cost), if it disapproves of what they practice.

Ohio has found itself in the crosshairs of the latest national debate over the death penalty: Should executioners' identities be protected?

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio begged the question with a wide-ranging request for state records seeking information on the May 24 execution of an inmate whose veins took 90 minutes to find and whose death came a record-setting 16 minutes after the toxic drugs began to flow.

Among other things, the ACLU asked for the names of Christopher Newton's execution team--a group of volunteer medics and guards whose identities are routinely shielded by the state.

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the G-man said:
However, as far as it relates to the identities of the volunteer medics...I thought the ACLU was all about protecting the right to privacy.

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• The latest battle of religion in the public square is unfolding in Dearborn, Michigan, a city with one of the highest Muslim populations in the country. At the University of Michigan's local campus, administrators have recently refitted several school bathrooms to include small footbaths in the corner--an accommodation for Muslim students who must perform ritual washing as part of their daily observance. The issue has more than a few of the usual suspects trying to explain their way out of their usual positions on the separation of church and state.
  
  The Detroit chapter of the ACLU has scrambled to find a way to recuse itself from the matter, claiming that the footbaths qualify as secular since they could be used by non-Muslims, and therefore don't cross the group's usual bright church-state line. Further, the ACLU explains, the university's decision to take on the $25,000 expense was motivated primarily "by health and safety" because some students didn't like washing their hands in the sinks after others students had washed their feet. If that hadn't been the case, the group says this religious accommodation would surely have merited greater investigation and criticism.
  
  This is the same ACLU chapter that in 2005 objected to a high-school wrestling coach saying a prayer with his team before meets, calling the action "inherently coercive." And the ACLU of Michigan is already on the defensive for its non-action this time. In a letter explaining its silence regarding university footbaths, the ACLU notes that it "has often come to the defense of other religions when the state has attempted to interfere with their religious expression." The letter even includes a list of cases in which the group has defended Christian clients. Too bad none of the examples prove much of a parallel to the current recusal over state recognition of a religious practice.