The American Civil Liberties Union claims in a just-launched national ad campaign that it has “led the fight to defend your freedoms” over the last 80 years.
Never shy about self-promotion, the ACLU says elsewhere that it is the “nation’s guardian of liberty,” and “in many ways,” America’s “most conservative organization.”
Such claims contrast sharply with radical ACLU policies on abortion, homosexuality, and pornography. The Christian Liberties Task Force, a new Coral Ridge Ministries initiative, starting this month, will give the facts behind glib ACLU assertions.
ACLU Accolades
It is much needed. After all, ACLU accolades are passed out from some surprising quarters.
It’s not unexpected, of course, that Hollywood echoes ACLU claims. In the 1995 movie,
The American President, Michael Douglas boldly declares, “Yes, I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU.” Douglas, who plays President Andy Sheppard, tells his electoral opponent that “This is an organization whose sole purpose is to defend the Bill of Rights.”
But not only actors, actual occupants of the Oval Office have praised the ACLU. Harry Truman credited the ACLU with having “performed outstanding service to the cause of true freedom.” Lyndon Johnson said it was engaged in an “unremitting fight against injustice and intolerance.”
Even the authoritative Encyclopedia Britannica puffs the legal group, informing readers that the ACLU “works to protect Americans’ constitutional rights and freedoms….”
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Defending Pornography
Well, not exactly. The ACLU, since its inception in 1920, has worked to apply the Bill of Rights in ways that America’s Founders would never have dreamed of by, among other things, defending the rights of pornographers.
The ACLU argues that even child pornography is constitutionally protected free speech while, ironically, seeking to censor religious expression in the public square. It has successfully argued in court to ban school prayer and Bible reading, a moment of silence in public schools, the teaching of creation science in public schools, nativity displays on public property, public high school graduation prayer, and the posting of the Ten Commandments.
For the ACLU, “the establishment of a free society is predicated on the idea that religion must be surgically removed from culture,” according to William Donohue, author of
The Politics of the American Civil Liberties Union.
“They have kind of a
religiophobia,” he said in an interview. “They have a notion that if there’s too much religion publicly expressed in our society, somehow we’re going to be less well off as a result.”
The ACLU is also one of the nation’s most active litigants on behalf of abortion rights and supports homosexual rights, including homosexual marriage and homosexual adoption. All this, while claiming to be a “neutral political organization,” as former ACLU executive director Ira Glasser once asserted in a
Coral Ridge Hour interview. Donohue scoffs. “They’re not non-partisan,” he said. “They are the legal arm of the liberal left.”
Please see Task Force, page 7
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