Joining the ACLU?

X86Daddy writes "I'm currently a member of the EFF. I agree with everything they do. I'd like to further help protect liberty and freedom, and the ACLU advertises that they exist for that purpose. The ACLU is an organization well known for controversy. I've heard many opinions for and against it, and even a few citations of evidence. I've read their positions on their website, and although I strongly disagree with some of what they believe, I support the majority of their positions. I've also read some of their court filings, in search of more evidence of what they really do. I'm still undecided. I've even sent them an unanswered e-mail about the percentages of money spent on their main positions. So, I ask the Slashdot audience, what information do you have about the ACLU? I'm interested in facts about how they spend their efforts with regards to all of their efforts, electronic-related or not."

Comments

The organization has an obvious slant

[Henry V .009]

The ACLU believes that the first amendment protects the rights of child pornographers but that the second amendment has nothing to do with the right to bear arms.

Yes they do.

[MarkusQ]

I think you're missing a key distinction in their position: they supported both sides's right to voice their opinion; but they opposed ones side's use of extortion to try to silence the other. Specifically, when the leaders of one side "directed activists involved in that group...to use threats and acts of intimidation and extortion in their efforts to shut down" the other group, the ACLU said that this crossed the line from speach to action and thus was not protected.

Basically, someone is allowed to think my nose is too big, and even to say publically that they think it's too big, but they aren't allowed to wave a knife in my face to make their point.

-- MarkusQ

Founding Fathers were Deists, not Christians

[tm2b]

The Founding Fathers were openly religious. The practice of praying to God, and not just any God, the Christian God embraced by the Christian religions, in government has continued even today

Uh... no.

The "Founding Fathers," were generally Deists, not Christians. Deist beliefs are incompatible with Christianity. Deism, and the entire philosophy of Natural Rights, is an outgrowth of the Age of Reason that embraced a Creator that did not reveal itself by revelation but through its creation itself.

Let's look at what some of the best-known "founding fathers" said about Christianity, society, and Law:

• Thomas Jefferson : Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
• Ben Franklin: "I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean real good works ... not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity."
• Thomas Paine : The fable of Christ and his twelve apostles, which is a parody on the sun and the twelve signs of the zodiac, copied from the ancient religions of the eastern world, is the least hurtful part."
• James Madison: "Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.
• John Adams: As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?

Here are some other links on the whole "Founding Fathers were Christian" bogon:

• http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/founding-fathers-xtia nity.html
• http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/extra/foundin g-fathers.html
• http://www.barefootsworld.net/founding.html