The ACLU and Scouting

[OldGreyEagle]

Not that I would ever want to be labeled a Sadistic Sodomistic Necrophilyist (One who loves to beat dead horses)but, the ACLU still has no power to make anyone do anything. Again, The ACLU does not have the power to do anything. The ACLU brings topics to the attention of the court system. If you do not like the COURT decisions that are made, then its the COURT system that needs to be addressed. Chasing after the ACLU wastes time and effort that would be better served in either judicial reform or changing the laws that are interpreted by the COURT system. It is not the bogeymen of the ACLU that is the issue, its the judges that make the decisions that effect the BSA

[scoutingagain]

"It is not the bogeymen of the ACLU that is the issue, its the judges that make the decisions that effect the BSA "

 

Well that, and as you have pointed out, the laws the judges base their decisions on.

 

There's that pesky Constitution we would have to deal with.

 

SA

 

[OldGreyEagle]

"There's that pesky Constitution we would have to deal with"

 

yeah, Bummer man (said with impeccable Cheech Marin voice)

[evmori]

The ACLU might not have any power but it does have lots of muscle! Just like the mob!

[GernBlansten]

I personally like my civil liberties and am very glad there is a watchdog group out there defending them.

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Yes Ed, they have enough muscle to force issues to be reviewed for soundness of law. The very idea!

[Beavah]

Yah, I don't know.

 

I had a friend who built a new house, on land he owned. His neighbor had liked da view he had when the lot was all trees. So he sued my friend to try to force him to tear down the house and replant the trees. No joke. Suit took many years, appealed up da chain, cost my friend tens of thousands of dollars.

 

I think it's OK to fault the guy who brought the suit, no matter what the courts rule.

 

As citizens, it's true, we are free to take anything to court. But as good citizens, we shouldn't. We should reserve da court system for serious, unresolvable disputes. Even if we're "right."

 

I've got neighbors with bad habits. A few annoy me a bit. But in a lot of other ways they're good neighbors. In a diverse society, some things, like Christmas decorations, aren't worth gettin' in arguments over. If I don't like the lights on my neighbor's house, I can shut da blinds. If I don't like people with hats on in restaurants, I can ignore 'em, get take-out, or go to a more expensive restaurant for old grumps like me. But I reckon I would be a poor neighbor and citizen if I insisted on takin' everyone to court over trivial stuff just so I could have things my way. Fact is, I could get my way doin' that more often than not, because other folks would give in rather than pay the cost needed to defend themselves.

 

So in that way, I think criticizin' the ACLU and any of the 'partisan' legal groups for their actions is fair game. Lots of lawsuits can be filed just to try to get your way by threat and intimidation. And lots of arguments shouldn't be arguments. They should instead be polite disagreements between neighbors.

 

Beavah

 

[OldGreyEagle]

Beavah, you are going to have to show me where the ACLU ever went after a private home that had Christmas Lights on it.

[Hiromi]

Hello fellow law-abiders,

 

I have personally been involved in an attempt by the ACLU in league with the Anti-defamation league to get the Chicago Public Schools to either remove or change a mural I had painted in a school in Humboldt Park.

 

The tactics were based on fear and intimidation in the form of letters which pointed out what they considered disturbing violations of church state separation clauses. These letters usually do enough to scare an entity into taking some action to appease the ACLU from filing a suit- but in my case- the Chicago Public School Board legal department found that the murals I painted, even though they showed depictions of people who could be religious figures, (a portrayal of a man washing the feet of other men, a man on a mountain looking to heaven with tablets, and a Puerto Rican man with an open bible on his desk) they felt that none these images were advocating religious belief.

 

In fact, this issue only came to the attention of the ACLU and the ADL becasue of an irate teacher who thought she could get back at the principal who had been the patron of the mural.

 

Some of you say that the ACLU is some sort of friendly service provider, insuring that we have a better society for all. This is hogwash in my experience (anecdotal as it is). I have found them to be a mean and cynical lot, in cahoots with political activists. It is a documented fact that the ACLU's founding members can be traced back to the communist party.

 

They are scaring the public schools into creating blanket bans on all religious groups by these friendly letters. That is how they did it here in my town. The excuse was made that some Jehovah's witnesses wanted to set up shop in the school, so to be fair, they said the school was closed off to all religious organizations with their implicit discriminatory policies. But the deeper truth is Boy Scouting is seen to be at war with liberalism, i.e. Homosexuality. And the liberal folks around here are walking in lock step to fight the scouts- even if they have to hide behind legal barricades.

 

Pappy

 

 

[fgoodwin]

I'm with pappy on this one. Its not the courts bringing the lawsuits, its the ACLU.

 

And make no mistake -- if BSA would only bend to the will of the ACLU, the lawsuits would magically disappear.

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Fred, how long would Blattman Elementary have continued to violate the civil rights of its own students by chartering your cub scout pack if the ACLU hadn't acted?

[OldGreyEagle]

And if the courts found against the ACLU how long would they continue to file?

 

And how does one hide behind a legal barricade? If someone takes my stuff and wont give it back, am I hiding behind a legal barricade to call the police and report a theft? Should I take matters in my own hands and take back what is mine? I guess that would be more manly than allowing the legal system to work.

 

We either follow all laws and are civilized, or we pick and choose what laws we will follow. And if we choose civil disobediance, as did Thoreau, then we subject ourselves to the punishment dealt without whimper

[Beavah]

And if the courts found against the ACLU how long would they continue to file?

 

Yah, the courts did find against the ACLU in Dale, eh?

 

So they came up with new tactics, and filed a barrage of suits with new arguments in new courts.

 

I reckon the proper answer to that question is "forever". When you're pushin' an agenda, yeh keep going and going and going until you find da weakest judicial link.

 

If followin' the law is our ultimate end in ethics, as Merlyn and OGE seem to advocate, then manipulating the law in order to get what we want becomes big business. It's worth spendin' big bucks or usin' smear tactics to get the "right" legislator elected or judge appointed.

 

Just doesn't seem like good citizenship to me.

 

In fact, I reckon that's why the BSA maintains that belief in a higher source of ethics beyond the law is necessary for the best kind of citizenship.

 

B

 

[evmori]

The BSA bashing will by the ACLU will continue as long as someone will listen to the slanted arguments presented.

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Beavah, the new barrage of lawsuits are based on the results of the Dale decision, where the BSA is a private, discriminatory, religious organization. The Balboa park lawsuit, for example, is due to the city leasing the BSA 18 acres of public land for $1/year without any competitive bidding. The city can't do that any more than they could give the Catholic Church 18 acres for $1/year. And "manipulating the law" is what the BSA is doing, if you'll check out the "Boy Scouts of America Equal Access Act". And the BSA supporters have yet to explain how having public school charter packs and troops for five years after the Dale decision was ethical or honest.