A fundraising plea from the ACLU

You can hardly turn the television on or read the news without encountering a Catholic bishop, a conservative talk show host or a reactionary politician proclaiming that America is experiencing a "war on religion." They should know, because they're the ones waging it.

Religious extremists are doing everything in their power to destroy the wall between church and state. They are stirring up sympathy by yelling from the rooftops about religious freedom, while their real goal is to use the power of the government to impose their narrow-minded beliefs on the rest of us.

America is one of the most religious — and diversely religious — countries in the world precisely because our Constitution says that each one of us can choose our own religious beliefs or have no religion at all and the government can't tell us otherwise.

But today that essential ideal is increasingly under attack — and it is going to take everything we've got to defend the separation of church and state against this organized and dangerous assault. That's why I urge you to do two things right away:

Stand up and be counted. Sign the ACLU's pledge to vigorously defend the separation of church and state. Support the ACLU's defense of your rights and freedoms. Please make a contribution to the ACLU of $25, $35, $50 or more to help our attorneys and advocates defend your religious freedom.

We need everyone in America who values true religious liberty to stand with the ACLU as we confront powerful forces that are advancing an agenda of discrimination and coercion.

• Employers will be able to refuse to provide health insurance for any type of medical service just by asserting a moral objection.

• Our public schools will teach biblical creationism in science classes on an equal footing with scientific evolution.

• Women will be denied access to abortion and birth control whenever and wherever a politician or employer decides they have moral objections to providing such access.

• Hard-won gains for gays and lesbians will be reversed, and deliberate discrimination against LGBT people will be perpetuated by those who have moral objections to same-sex relationships.

If that's not the America you believe in, then we need you to act right now to support the ACLU's all-out efforts to protect separation of church and state.

All across the country, when people's religious freedom is put in jeopardy, they turn to the ACLU for help. We are in communities all across America working every single day to defend people whose rights have been violated because someone breached that invaluable wall separating church and state.

Your support today will ensure that the ACLU is on the front lines defending religious liberty in America by:

• Standing up to a systematic state-by-state assault on reproductive freedom aimed at restricting access to both abortion and contraception, including an Arizona bill that would — believe it or not — allow employers to fire a woman because of her use of contraception.

• Taking on growing efforts to force religion into our nation's public schools. Every year, we face more cases like the one in South Carolina where we stopped a public school district from holding school-day evangelical Christian rallies that urged children to pledge their lives to Jesus.

• Exposing and ending taxpayer funding of "abstinence-only" education programs, like one in Mississippi that uses public funds to hold just-say-no rallies for teens - which include overtly Christian messages and leave young people without the medically accurate information they need to protect their health.

• Fighting state and federal efforts to divert taxpayer dollars to religious organizations and mobilizing Americans to oppose legislation that would put the government in the business of funding religion and religious discrimination.

• Working to eliminate the Defense of Marriage Act, which allows religious opponents to same-sex marriage to perpetuate unconstitutional discrimination against gay and lesbian couples.

The ACLU has been vigorously resisting the unconstitutional proposals of religious zealots and narrow-minded moralists for more than 90 years. But what we're up against today is unprecedented.

I urge you again: Sign the enclosed pledge to defend separation of church and state. We must join together to vigorously defend the wall of separation or risk losing some of our precious freedoms.

And then, please make a generous contribution to the ACLU to help us go to court and fight for your right to live your life according to your own beliefs. If you agree that the rights to practice one's religion, or no religion at all, and to live one's life according to one's own beliefs are among the most fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, then there is no more important time to make your voice heard. That is why I'm writing today to ask you to stand with the ACLU as we defend the constitutional principle that defines America: There is no religious freedom without the separation of church and state.

Can we count you in as we confront these all-out efforts to tear down the wall of separation? We need you with us. Thank you.

P.S. The ACLU has attorneys and advocates in all 50 states. We're taking on the religious extremists from one end of the country to the other. But we need your voice added to ours and your commitment to fight to defend your religious freedom.

I got this letter in the mail today and have a paid reply envelope. I am open to suggestions from Freepers about what I should tell the ACLU beyond suggesting they do to themselves something which is anatomically impossible.

You need to read the full letter just to understand how totally evil this outfit is.

Killing an unborn child to them is an inalienable right. Refusing to pay for it, however, is right wing extremism. Notice also that the first enemy mentioned in their letter is a Catholic bishop. No Catholic should vote for Obama for that reason alone. They have just clearly proclaimed Catholics and conservatives as their enemy,

Tomorrow, I will send this to all the attorneys in the Stm Thomas More Society in Baltimore. People need to wake up

Today I listened to Hillsdale’s latest Constitution 201 lecture.

FDR hijacked constitutional memes to press for social justice Utopia.

The ACLU pulled the same tactic. They are merely interested in keeping intact the constitutional wall between church and state, right?

People only casually knowledgeable of the Constitution are susceptible to the twisted logic of those who would reduce a once free people into slavery.

ACLU Amerika,s communist lunatic union.

Catholic churches should now pay for the abortion pill, but it’s the Church that’s declared war! The ACLU is like the 300 pound bully pounding on the skinny kid while screaming “stop hitting me!”. Totally disgusting. Black Christians should especially feel shame if they are still supporting this evil organization.

Good for you. I have a great deal of respect for the St. Thomas More Society. Don't they also have a very active legal arm?

IMHO, this ACLU letter ought to be made available to every priest, every parish and every other church who has the sense to understand that if it is the Catholics being targeted today, every other church will not be far behind.

We have another intolerable situation right in our own backyard where the Pittsburgh ACLU is cooperating with another atheist organization to stop the Connellsville, Pa. school district from relocating a 10 commandments monument which the atheists want gone to a neighboring Christian Church.<>These bastards are really emboldened by their bastard puppet in the white house!

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