ACLU threat nixes 23rd Psalm display

WND ^ | September 14, 2005

[BigFinn]

Tapestry with Bible passage hung in county courthouse

Fearing an expensive legal challenge from the ACLU, a county commissioner begrudgingly ordered removal of a display of the 23rd Psalm from a courthouse.

Lawyers with the Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union charged that displaying the tapestry at the Oglethorpe County Courthouse in Lexington, Ga., essentially is the same as displaying the Ten Commandments, the Athens, Ga., Banner-Herald reported.

As WorldNetDaily reported, the U.S. Supreme Court this summer ruled against the Decalogue's display in a Kentucky courthouse.

County Commission Chairman Robert Johnson directed an employee Monday to remove the Psalm, displayed on a tapestry about 4 feet by 5 feet.

"I sent somebody to take it down, which I think is the wrong thing to do. But I have to do it," Johnson told the Georgia paper.

The display hung for about a month in a hall outside the office of Geneva Stamey, the county clerk of courts.

But the county wanted to avoid the kind of lawsuit that cost Georgia's Barrow County $265,000 in an attempt to maintain a courthouse display of the Ten Commandments.

Johnson said, regarding the tapestry controversy, "It's a shame to say you're not willing to [fight it], but when you know you're going to lose before you start, there's no need to fight the battle."

Johnson added, "I'm not in agreement with the courts. I think we should have the right to do it, but the Supreme Court says we don't."

Stamey said she hung the tapestry to cover an unsightly window in the hallway and because she wanted to share her faith and the 23rd Psalm.

"I love it because of what it says," Stamey told the Banner-Herald.

But the ACLU insisted displaying the religious text is unconstitutional because it amounts to the government promoting one religion over another.

"What you have there is government taking a stand on religion, putting their stamp of approval on a particular religion," said Maggie Garrett, an ACLU staff attorney.

Proponents of such displays, however, contend the ACLU and its allies misread the Constitution's First Amendment, arguing it only bars Congress from establishing a state religion.

The clause says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

The Banner-Herald said there was no complaint about the tapestry until a reporter began asking about it Monday.

ACLU-Georgia Legal Director Gerry Webber said he had never heard of a case challenging a display of a 23rd Psalm text, but said it's a "potential violation" of the Constitution.

"That particular passage of the Bible is distinctly religious," he said.

In June, a sharply divided U.S. Supreme Court issued two historic rulings on the Ten Commandments, allowing its display at a state Capitol and striking down two displays at courthouses.

The decisions – both 5-4 votes – were the first on the issue since the court ruled 25 years ago that the Commandments could not be displayed in public schools.

At issue was the constitutionality of framed copies of the Commandments in two Kentucky courthouses and a monument on the grounds of the Texas state Capitol. The Kentucky opinions can be read here and the Texas opinions here.

In the Kentucky case, the high court declined to ban all displays on government property, saying some, like their own courtroom frieze, are allowed if they have a neutral purpose, such as honoring the nation's legal history.

But the courthouse displays were deemed a promotion of religion.

Writing for the majority, Justice David H. Souter said, "The touchstone for our analysis is the principle that the First Amendment mandates government neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion."

Souter said, "When the government acts with the ostensible and predominant purpose of advancing religion, it violates the central Establishment clause value of official religious neutrality."

Souter was joined in his opinion by Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sandra Day O'Connor.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia argued that Commandments displays "have a proper place in our civil history."

"In the court's view, the impermissible motive was apparent from the initial displays of the Ten Commandments all by themselves: When that occurs: the Court says, a religious object is unmistakable. Surely that cannot be."

In a stinging rebuke to the court, Scalia said, "What distinguishes the rule of law from the dictatorship of a shifting Supreme Court majority is the absolutely indispensable requirement that judicial opinions be grounded in consistently applied principle."

Scalia was joined in his opinion by Chief William H. Rehnquist and Justices Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.

[BigFinn]

ACLU can now continue and harass unabatted because they know that the little guy won't and can't challenge them financially. It is so bizarre that they are threatened by such things as this.

[Prophet in the wilderness]

Are they and N.O.W. federally funded in anyway or do they get federal grants ?

[concerned about politics]

ACLU can now continue and harass unabatted because they know that the little guy won't and can't challenge them financially. It is so bizarre that they are threatened by such things as this.

They're a communist organization. In the old days, they were called brown shirts. Their job is to intimidate the opposition in any way possible to push the communist agenda.

[msf92497]

I hate the bastidges.

Commie Shi* Heads.

[Mike Darancette]

They would deny us, arguably, the greatest piece of prose ever written because it mentions the "Lord" twice. The ACLU must be antisemitic.

[BigFinn]

Funding

The ACLU and its affiliated tax-exempt foundation receive substantial yearly support from the Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Field, Tides, Gill, Arcus, Horizons, and other foundations. However, recently the ACLU rejected $1.5 million from both the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations because it viewed a clause in the donation agreement stipulating that "none of the money would go to underwriting terrorism or other unacceptable activities" as a threat to civil liberties. The ACLU also withdrew from a federal charity drive, losing an estimated $500,000, taking a stand against the attached condition that it would "not knowingly hire anyone on terrorism watch lists."

The Center for Reclaiming America for Christ has uncovered documents revealing that the Florida Supreme Court is responsible for helping to fund the ACLU of Florida — using interest from legal trust funds generated by unsuspecting home buyers, heirs, and legal awards and settlements. Between 1990 and 1997, the Florida Bar Foundation (FBF), a creation of the Florida Supreme Court, provided more than $600,000 to help pay the salary of the ACLU of Florida’s legal director.
An Indiana congressman plans to curb the ACLU's appetite for filing suits targeting religion in the public square by introducing a bill that denies plaintiff attorneys the right to collect attorneys fees in such cases.

And

Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., is expected to file his measure next week to amend the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Act of 1976, 42 U.S.C. Section 1988, to prohibit prevailing parties from being awarded attorneys fee in religious establishment cases, but not in other civil rights filings. http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44155,p.

And

Although its website proclaims that it does not receive "any government funding," it does get money from a program that allows federal employees to make charitable contributions through payroll deductions. Last year it got $470,000 from the program. (The ACLU's 2002 annual budget, the most recent available, was $102 million.) Now it had a choice: give up the money, or sign a promise certifying that the ACLU "does not knowingly employ individuals or contribute funds to organizations found on" government watch lists of suspected supporters of terrorism. Trouble was, the ACLU had strongly opposed the lists, saying they were often inaccurate and violated the constitutional rights of some people. But it really hated the idea of giving up the money. So the ACLU chose to take the money AND keep hiring anyone it pleased irrespective of the lists. How? By applying what Nadine Strossen, the president of the ACLU board, described as "a very reasonable, certainly clever interpretation": they would simply remain totally ignorant of who was on the lists. Then it would be impossible to "knowingly" hire anyone on the lists, no matter who they hired.

[TheCrusader]

"They're a communist organization."

The ACLU is a powerless, secular organization hell bent on suppressing and outlawing the public expression of Christianity. I say "powerless" because unless they find friends in the Judiciary their anti-Christian lawsuits amount to nothing more than harrassment of Christians. But with a friendly judiciary this harrassment is empowered and given real teeth.

Since Christianity will always be opposed and persecuted, and since hateful organizations like the ACLU are legal in our country, it's the judiciary that must be changed. In fact, it's the judiciary that gives voice and power to all the frivelous law suits we see today; from atheists trying to strike down God from the Pledge of Allegiance to people suing gun companies for murders and tobacco companies for cancer deaths. I'm very surprised they haven't successfully sued the oil companies like Mobile and Exxon for deaths caused by air pollution.

BTW, I disagree that the ACLU are communists, with their leadership being primarily Jewish, and Communist governments having been major oppressors of Jews, it just doesn't make sense. Though the ACLU may persecute the display of a Star of David as much as the Crucifix, the Jewish faith has far, far less to lose in this hateful endeavor because it is not a prosylitizing faith, and they are not big into the display of icons and symbols as is Christianity, especially the Catholic Church. As I see it, it's a rather small sacrifice for such a big 'victory'. Still, Christianity has a lot of enemies, and I'm sure the ACLU are also comprised of a sizeable number of communists, socialists, atheists and homosexual perverts.

[Just Lori]

There's gotta be a way to get rid of these groups. I think sometimes the biggest threat to our nation comes from the inside.

[FreedomCalls]

Have you seen the quotes from Roger Baldwin, the founding Director of the ACLU? (the italics are in the original)

I believe in non-violent methods of struggle as most effective in the long run for building up successful working class power. Where they cannot be followed or where they are not even permitted by the ruling class, obviously only violent tactics remain. I champion civil liberty as the best of the non-violent means of building the power on which workers rule must be based. If I aid the reactionaries to get free speech now and then, if I go outside the class struggle to fight against censorship, it is only because those liberties help to create a more hospitable atmosphere for working class liberties. The class struggle is the central conflict of the world; all others are incidental.

Proletarian Liberty in Practice

When that power of the working class is once achieved, as it has been only in the Soviet Union, I am for maintaining it by any means whatever. Dictatorship is the obvious means in a world of enemies at home and abroad. I dislike it in principle as dangerous to its own objects. But the Soviet Union has already created liberties far greater than exist elsewhere in the world. They are liberties that most closely affect the lives of the people — power in the trade unions, in peasant organizations, in the cultural life of nationalities, freedom of women in public and private life, and a tremendous development of education for adults and children. . . .

I saw in the Soviet Union many opponents of the regime. I visited a dozen prisons — the political sections among them. I saw considerable of the work of the OGPU. I heard a good many stories of severity, even of brutality, and many of them from the victims. While I sympathized with personal distress I just could not bring myself to get excited over the suppression of opposition when I stacked it up against what I saw of fresh, vigorous expressions of free living by workers and peasants all over the land. And further, no champion of a socialist society could fail to see that some suppression was necessary to achieve it. It could not all be done by persuasion. . . .

[I]f American champions of civil liberty could all think in terms of economic freedom as the goal of their labors, they too would accept “workers’ democracy” as far superior to what the capitalist world offers to any but a small minority. Yes, and they would accept — regretfully, of course — the necessity of dictatorship while the job of reorganizing society on a socialist basis is being done.

[lndrvr1972]

Of course they do. What many people do not realize about the ACLU was started by a man who was a Leninist and did not believe the private ownership of land or property..

[FreedomCalls]

There's gotta be a way to get rid of these groups.

There is. Call your Congressman and ask him to support H.R. 2679. The ACLU brings these kind of lawsuits because it enables them to replenish their money coffers under the law that says they can get reimbursed "legal fees" (which of course they inflate) for these kind of suits. Without that financial incentive, they will stop bringing them. They file them because it is lucrative for them. They make money (off of us the taxpayers) when they do.

[thegreatbeast]

RICO statutes should be used against the ACLU. They have absolutely NO interest in furthering the American experiment in democracy. They are communists who advocate communism which is antithetical to our form of government. How many times must this be proven?

[newsgatherer]

This is a picture of the back of the publisher of Christian-news-in-maine.com's truck:

It is always in public places, he takes great delight in parking it on main roads where everyone going by has to read it or drive off the road. He parked in on a main road in Indianapolis for 8 days. He has it parked in August, Maine all the time, in Portland in front of the court house and policia station.

Yet, nary a word from the aclu or any of the other commies. WHY?

Because he has a reputation of not settling, not cow towing to the leftist.

Dr. Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and Rush along with a handful of less know talk show host are always complaining about the aclu, but, no where other than FreeRepublic actually showcases and documents the abuses by the aclu.

We don't need a President who is willing to fight the aclu, we need men and women who have had enough and call the politicians and say: "You bow down to the aclu and I'll fire you next election!" And mean it.

[newsgatherer]

I have just put this up on Christian-news-in-maine.com with a link back here.

Thanks,
Jake