The ACLU attacks a West Virginian community

[jackofallgeeks]

This is a (small instance of a larger) hot topic, though I have to confess that I'm really sure why. Particularly in West Virginia. I can maybe acknowledge certain concerns in similar cases elsewhere (though I think they're all rather ridiculous when it comes down to it, my own religious affiliation and thoughts on current interpretation of "separation of Church and State" as far aside as I can consciously put them). But especially in this case, where they were able to raise a couple hundred thousand dollars of private money from the community the school serves in order to fight the suit (with over 6,000 coming from the students themselves)... It seems to me the only one being offended here is the ACLU, who should really leave well enough alone a situation they have no part in.

Comments

[uhlrik.livejournal.com]

The ACLU isn't interested in helping people. They're interested in waging war-by-lawsuit on anyone and anything that doesn't toe the line of their social agenda and (not incidentally) enriching their own lawyers in the process.

[dikaiosunh.livejournal.com]

Well...

1. A portrait of Jesus hanging in the school hallway doesn't strike me as the most important battlefront in the church/state debate. Were I a student in the school, I'd find it *annoying,* but I probably wouldn't give it much thought.

2. That said, I think both your comments and the comments at the end of the article and about "taking away our freedoms" miss the point of constitutional rights. "Freedom" in a constitutional system != the majority doing as it likes. It doesn't matter if the majority, even the overwhelming majority, of people in the town like the portrait, even enough to give money for its defense. Things like the establishment clause are there precisely to protect minorities from the will of the majority. Even if it's only a few people in town who find the picture offensive, their claims need to be assessed on the basis of whether or not the portrait does in fact constitute an "establishment" of religion, not on whether or not most of the people in town like that establishment. Now, you may think that hanging a Jesus picture isn't "establishment," (and it's not clear to me from the context whether I'd say it was) but that's a different argument.

3. Re: the ACLU. Skokie v. Illinois? Fred Phelps? The ACLU's "social agenda" is 1st-amendment absolutism, something they've never made any bones about.

[dikaiosunh.livejournal.com]

Duh. Screwed up the cite. National Socialist Party of America v. Skokie.