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I hope you heard Average American and I on Saturday's radio show asking the ACLU lady some tough questions. I asked her why they chose to kick the boy scouts out of Balboa Park after years of being there. I asked her why it was ok to have a gay pride party at the park and not the boy scouts. She really could not answer the question except to say they have represented the boy scouts with regard to other issues. By the way, the ACLU was paid over $900,000 in that case. But the real kicker was when I asked her to defend the representation of NAMBLA in the murder of a young boy in Boston. This organization preys on young boys through membership and on the internet. She said it's the first amendment right for NAMBLA to speak up and be allowed to have free speech. Keep in mind this is an organization that states "our membership is open to all individuals sympathietic to man/boy love in particular and sexual freedom in general". I asked her a simple yes or no question, does she think NAMBLA should be allowed to be on the internet. After dodging and dodging she said yes. That is all I need to know about the ACLU. It has nothing to do with free speech, last time I checked it's against the law to have sex with under age boys. Moron in charge made a good point that it's similar to yelling fire in a crowded building, it's not a free speech issue. Think about that one if you have a young child. The ACLU does some good things and many years ago did more good than bad. Today for every good thing they do I will give you a bad thing. This is not a left or right issue. This is about an organization that is running amuck with the court system and costing us millions of dollars and ruining peoples lives. Other issues I asked her about was the ACLU wanting a cross to come down off the hill in San Diego that has stood since 1954 and defending Afgans and Irag prisioners at Abu Ghrabu (sp) for torture against our government. By the ay all 9 of the prisioners have been released. Boy scouts, christmas ornaments, crosses, 10 commandments, perverts and more. If you need to know more about the thinking of the ACLU check out what the founder said. AA brought this up to her, the founder Rodger Baldwin would of liked nothing more than to have a dictatorship and loved the communism theory. Put the left right issue aside and think long and hard about what the ACLU is doing to everyone in this country.
The disctinction she draws is that an adult that has a sexual relation with a minor is a criminal and is indefensible. But the right for a person to simply express their belief that man-boy love is O.K. by putting up a website should be considered a 1st Amendment right.
I have a real problem with this position, and it is similar to the problem I have with defending the neo-nazis right to march in Skokie to express and advocate their views of hate and intolerance to the public. Of course, hate and intolerance comes in all forms, some less obvious than others. I just differ from the ACLU on where the line is in these particular cases. I find it too similar to defending someone's right to tell you to commit a crime, even if they aren't in the process of committing it.
But these cases are the extreme. No one here defending the ACLU has ever said that they agree with everything the ACLU does. Defending the 1st Amendment, and the rest of the Bill of Rights can put you in some pretty unpopular positions. You said yourself that you are 50:50 on the ACLU. I find myself more like 95:5. I think that the individual examples that you and AA bring up to catch the ACLU with their pants down are just that - individual cases of huge contention. For every one of those cases they have been there to legitimately and appropriately defend the civil rights of people in hundreds of instances without the controversy or outrage.
Until our legal system does a better job to ensure that these cases are not swept under the rug because the defendent lacked the resources, the knowledge, the access, or the money to have their day in court - I see an ongoing need for the interference and intervention of the ACLU. They aren't picking sides. They aren't partisan. They will defend you, me, Rush Limbaugh, a Baptist Church, an atheist, or anyone else if they see even a possibility that a Constitutional right is being violated. They are an necessary evil and a small price to pay to defend our most cherished laws.
As for one of the founders of the ACLU being a Communist, keep in mind that the political philosophy of Communism was not a dirty word in 1920, and the merits of Communism were seriously discussed by our political leaders of the day. In any case, the only vestige of Communist philosophy that has been incorporated into the mission of the ACLU is "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." This shouldn't be too radical a philosophy for an organization created in part by a man who expoused Communism: it's in the Declaration of Independence.
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