ACLU Post Series, Interlude

Do a search for "ACLU and Christmas," and you'll get page after page of histrionics from Christians who insist that the ACLU is trying to retroactively abort Baby Jeebus. They deserve bonus points for enthusiasm, to be sure, but the evidence they offer up to support their claims is somewhat less than convincing.

One week after extending the “ACLU Christmas Challenge,” I have received a grand total of three cases proposed as examples of ACLU infringement on the rights of Christians. Of these, one can be dismissed outright because it clearly does not involve anti-Christian bias, and another must be dismissed due to the lack of anything approaching solid evidence. The remaining case does at least involve specific targeting of a Christian religious symbol, but did not violate any rights held by Christian citizens (or any other citizens for that matter).

Urban myths about the ACLU are as numerous as they are fictional. The ACLU has never brought suit against a little boy who sang “Silent Night” in a school pageant. There is no ACLU case against “Merry Christmas.” There is no ACLU case against owning Christmas trees. The ACLU has never filed suit private citizens who wish to pray in public places, though they did successfully free a New Mexico street preacher from jail after he was arrested while "preaching the word of God" at passing cars.

On the contrary, the ACLU has a history of defending the rights of Christian citizens. Just a few months ago, the New Jersey ACLU took the side of a second-grader who was barred from singing "Awesome God" in a talent show. The ACLU intervened on the side of a Christian student when a Michigan high school censored religious yearbook entries, and supported the rights of students in Iowa who wanted to distribute Christian literature at school. In December of 2004, the State Supreme Court cited ACLU arguments from a friend-of-the-court brief in its ruling that a prosecutor violated the New Jersey Constitution when he removed jurors from a jury pool for their religious beliefs (one of whom was blocked for having engaged in missionary activity). The ACLU defended a Presbyterian church in August, 2004, when the city of Lincoln unfairly imposed "safety" standards on the church but not on surrounding businesses. In June, 2004, the ACLU of Virginia helped convince officials not to prohibit baptisms in a public park.

As far as I can tell, the closest we’ve got to an "anti-Christmas" ACLU case is the case where the ACLU filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the MBTA for removing anti-Santa subway advertisements. I guess you could interpret that as the ACLU being anti-Santa, and therefore anti-Christmas and anti-Christian, right? Well, maybe not, since the ads in question were being run by a local Christian church, and the ACLU was defending their right to religious liberty.

So whence cometh this myth of the Christian-hating ACLU? In the next installment of the ACLU Post Series, we will get to know some of the major players behind much of the anti-ACLU propaganda.