This is my 100th post, and it’s a bit different than what I usually write about. Below is an editorial I submitted to my local paper, The Tennessean, in response to a front-page puff piece about the ACLU in Tennessee. It ran in today’s edition. You can read the article to which I responded here: http://tinyurl.com/yg22jkw.
Although I didn’t address this directly in my response, The Tennessean article indicates the ACLU plans a big campaign on rights. Because I often write about perceptions, it seems appropriate to mention here the irony of an organization that has led an unprecedented assault against religious expression attempting to position itself as the guardian of our rights.
I have no doubt the ACLU’s campaign will be slick, well funded and extraordinarily misleading.
As we celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday, one of the things I’m especially thankful for is the freedom we are blessed with in America. We must be ever vigilant to protect these freedoms as there are many working to take them away and reshape our nation in a way our Founding Fathers never intended.
Here’s my response:
ACLU Tennessee Executive Director Hedy Weinberg was raised believing she has “a responsibility and a role to play in creating a just and fair community.” [The Tennessean, Nov. 22, 2009].
The question is, how do we define what is just and fair for a community, and if there is disagreement whose values should be upheld?
She claims to support “what our founders wanted,” so let’s review what they said and believed about religious freedom. The Declaration of Independence explicitly states that all men “…are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights….”
Our Founding Fathers clearly recognized there is a God and that whatever rights we have are derived from Him rather than government. They also understood the important role religion plays in making a just and equitable society possible.
The Bible has formed the basis for much of our law, and Judeo-Christian ethics have guided our republic for more than two centuries.
In a 1990 speech titled “The Constitution and Religion,” Chief Justice Warren Burger stressed the importance religion has played in our nation, noting how President George Washington and other leaders frequently called for divine guidance for America.
Mr. Burger seemed to understand something the ACLU does not: there is nothing improper about the acknowledgment of God and religion by government. The First Amendment simply states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
Yet the ACLU has consistently sought to turn this language on its head and use the Establishment Clause as a club to drive religion from the public arena.
The ACLU’s selective tolerance has led to lawsuits against the Boy Scouts of America because members profess belief in God and because it barred homosexuals from becoming scout leaders. It has sought to deny parents rights to protect their children from some of the worst forms of pornography, fought to remove historic religious symbols and bullied public school officials into censoring student religious speech.
Whether the issue is “hate-crime” legislation that punishes pastors who speak out on the biblical view of morality or laws that seek to compel individuals and institutions to betray their religious beliefs on matters such as abortion, religious freedom in our nation is under assault as never before.
What did our Founding Fathers really believe, Ms. Weinberg? Consider Benjamin Franklin’s words: “Man will ultimately be governed by God or by tyrants.”
Link to Tennessean editorial: http://www.tennessean.com/article/20091125/OPINION03/911250359/1007/OPINION/ACLU+fails+to+understand+meaning+of+religious+freedom
Posted by donbeehler 
