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Prominent Chicago Religious Leaders Applaud Court Order Ending Pentagon’s Special Funding for Boy Scout Jamboree
   
July 7, 2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: media@aclu.org

CHICAGO -- Two well-known Chicago religious leaders today hailed an injunction by U.S. District Court Judge Blanche Manning that bars the Pentagon from spending millions of dollars to support future Boy Scout Jamborees (the only youth organization event so funded by the Pentagon).

The judge’s decision is the most recent action in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois on behalf of religious and community leaders from Chicago who were alarmed at the favored treatment afforded by several governmental entities to the Boy Scouts of America, despite the BSA’s religious requirements for participation. The injunction does not cover the Jamboree already scheduled for this summer.

 Two lead plaintiffs in the case filed in 1999, Reverend Eugene Winkler and Rabbi Gary Gerson, stated today that the judge’s order helps maintain the critical constitutional principle of government neutrality towards religion.

"Government has an obligation to be neutral in religious activities," said Rev. Winkler, a former pastor at the First United Methodist Church in Chicago. "Government must be neutral because we are a nation of many religious views -- as well as those who do not practice a religion. The expenditure of $8 million by the Pentagon for an organization that requires young people to affirm a belief in God -- and the simultaneous exclusion of secular organizations from this benefit -- undermines that principle of neutrality. Judge Manning recognized this fact and took appropriate action."

The Boy Scouts of America, a private organization, require youth who participate in their activities to affirm a belief in God and expels youth who decline to do so. Yet Congress and the Pentagon have chosen to provide the Boy Scouts -- and no other youth organization - with a unique and lucrative benefit which, for this summer’s Jamboree, amounts to $8 million in federal spending to assist the Boy Scouts in providing a summer camp experience for its youth. No other youth organization is allowed to compete for this generous federal benefit, the ACLU noted.

The injunction follows a March 16, 2005 decision by Judge Manning ruling that the Department of Defense’s special treatment of the Boy Scouts violates the Constitution’s requirement of governmental neutrality towards religious activity. The religious leaders who brought the case applauded the decision.

Pentagon support for the quadrennial Jamboree extends far beyond simply providing a venue for the event. Indeed, evidence in the case demonstrated that the Pentagon’s $8 million expenditure included a half-million dollars for temporary workers to erect and break down tents and $65,000 for commemorative mementos to mark the Jamboree.

The direct funding provided to the Jamboree -- at levels offered to no other youth group -- is particularly alarming not only because of the BSA’s exclusions of non-believers but also because of the explicitly religious aspects of the Jamboree, the ACLU said. Troop leaders are issued a guidebook by the Boy Scouts of America indicating that a prayer book is "required personal camping equipment" for all youth attendees. The BSA also issues a "Duty to God" booklet for each participant that recommends prayers for each day of the Jamboree.

Most important, however, is the exclusion of non-believers from this government-funded event. Because of this, Judge Manning found, the statute that provides special treatment and special funding for the Boy Scouts Jamboree is not neutral with regards to religion. The Judge’s decision reasoned that the government aid was "not offered to a broad range of groups; rather, it is specifically targeted toward the Boy Scouts, which…is a religious organization from which agnostics and atheists are excluded."

"This is not an attack on the Boy Scouts," said Rabbi Gerson of Oak Park Temple. "Rather, it is a challenge to the federal government’s preferential treatment of a religious organization. Government simply cannot give special treatment to a private group that excludes young men who do not profess a particular religious faith."

The decision resolves one more element of a lawsuit first filed in 1999. The ACLU of Illinois, acting on behalf of Reverend Winkler, Rabbi Gerson and others, challenged the use of public funds by the Chicago Public Schools, the Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to support Boy Scout troops.

The Chicago Public Schools and the Pentagon previously entered into settlements agreeing to stop their direct sponsorship of Boy Scout troops. Boy Scouts can still meet on military bases, and military personnel can still participate in Scout activities on their own time. The Pentagon settlement came after lawyers from the ACLU of Illinois argued that the Pentagon’s direct sponsorship of BSA troops meant that government personnel -- acting in their official capacity -- were requiring young people to affirm a belief in God in order to participate in a government-sponsored activity.

Charles Peters, Laura Friedel and David Scott of the Schiff Hardin law firm are co-counsel along with ACLU of Illinois attorney Adam Schwartz in representing Reverend Winkler and Rabbi Gerson.

The court’s ruling is online at: http://www.aclu.org/ReligiousLiberty/ReligiousLiberty.cfm?ID=18643&c=37.

 

Judge: ACLU not 'reasonable'
Court whacks civil-liberties group, OKs Ten Commandments display
Posted: December 20, 2005
4:32 p.m. Eastern

© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

A U.S. appeals court today upheld the decision of a lower court in allowing the inclusion of the Ten Commandments in a courthouse display, hammering the American Civil Liberties Union and declaring, "The First Amendment does not demand a wall of separation between church and state."

Attorneys from the American Center for Law and Justice successfully argued the case on behalf of Mercer County, Ky., and a display of historical documents placed in the county courthouse. The panel voted 3-0 to reject the ACLU's contention the display violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.

The county display the ACLU sued over included the Ten Commandments, the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, the Magna Charta, the Star Spangled Banner, the National Motto, the Preamble to the Kentucky Constitution, the Bill of Rights to the U. S. Constitution and a picture of Lady Justice.

Writing for the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Richard Suhrheinrich said the ACLU's "repeated reference 'to the separation of church and state' ... has grown tiresome. The First Amendment does not demand a wall of separation between church and state."

Suhrheinrich wrote: "The ACLU, an organization whose mission is 'to ensure that ... the government [is kept] out of the religion business,' does not embody the reasonable person."

The court said a reasonable observer of Mercer County's display appreciates "the role religion has played in our governmental institutions, and finds it historically appropriate and traditionally acceptable for a state to include religious influences, even in the form of sacred texts, in honoring American traditions."

Francis J. Manion, Counsel for the ACLJ, argued the case before both the 6th Circuit and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.

"This is a big victory for the people of Mercer County and Kentucky generally," said Manion in a statement. "For too long they have been lectured like children by those in the ACLU and elsewhere who claim to know what the people's Constitution really means. What the Sixth Circuit has said is that the people have a better grasp on the real meaning of the Constitution; the Court recognizes that the Constitution does not require that we strip the public square of all vestiges of our religious heritage and traditions."

ACLU and CAIR Team Up to Fight Anti-Terror Efforts….Again

The dynamic duo of the ACLU and CAIR are teaming up once again to fight efforts of rooting out terrorists.

    The Los Angeles Police Department announced plans Thursday to map Muslim communities, hoping to identify people who might be liable to succumb to — as Deputy Chief Michael P. Downing put it — “violent, ideologically based extremism.” Downing said that the LAPD would work with a Muslim partner, and added: “We want to know where the Pakistanis, Iranians and Chechens are so we can reach out to those communities.”

    The ACLU of Southern California, an association of Muslim lawyers called Muslim Advocates, the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California and the Council on American Islamic Relations wrote to Downing that “singling out individuals for investigation, surveillance, and data-gathering based on their religion constitutes religious profiling that is just as unlawful, ill-advised and deeply offensive as racial profiling.” And also, “the mapping of Muslim communities…seems premised on the faulty notion that Muslims are more likely to commit violent acts than people of other faiths.”

    Of course they aren’t: that’s why we see Presbyterians blowing themselves up in crowded restaurants, Buddhists flying planes into buildings, and Amish waving placards crowing that they will soon dominate the world. The mapping of Muslim communities is sensible in light of the violent acts committed around the world — over 9,000 separate attacks since 9/11– in the name of Islam. But political correctness has kept law enforcement officials (and the media) from asking the hard questions they should ask of Muslim leaders in the United States. Absurdities abound. One police official lamented: “We’ll come back from a Kumbayah meeting with a local mosque and realize that these guys who just agreed to help us are in our terror files!” Cleveland Muslim leader Fawaz Damra signed the Fiqh Council of North America’s condemnation of terrorism — and was later deported for failing to disclose his ties to terrorist groups. Damra was never expelled from his communities in Brooklyn, New York, or Cleveland despite having said at a 1989 Islamic conference that “the first principle is that terrorism, and terrorism alone, is the path to liberation.”

Peaceful American Muslims have not moved to expose, expel, or separate themselves from those who hold such sentiments. There is no wall of separation in the American Muslim community between Muslims who accept American pluralism and want to live ordinary lives and those who hold to the ideology of jihad and the subjugation of infidels held by Osama bin Laden. And authorities have not investigated the presence of such sentiments at all, despite the fact that they could be a reliable indicator of who might commit violent acts in the future and who might not.

Are there really jihadist sympathizers in American mosques? Yes. Sahim Alwan, a onetime leader of the Yemeni community in Lackawanna, New York and president of the mosque there, has the distinction of being the first American to attend an Al Qaeda training camp. Maher Hawash’s transition from secular Intel exec to jihadist was accompanied by an increase in his Islamic fervor and frequent mosque attendance.

This doesn’t mean that every Muslim in the United States is secretly plotting a jihad attack. But would it really be wise to risk everything on the assumption that none are?

The outrage of the ACLU and the Muslim groups over “the faulty notion that Muslims are more likely to commit violent acts than people of other faiths” founders on the fact that many Muslim groups have actually declared their desire to commit violent acts in the United States. We would be foolish -- suicidally so -- not to take all necessary steps to protect ourselves accordingly. If American Muslim groups were genuinely concerned about the unfair targeting of Muslims, they could direct their efforts to making concerted efforts to work with law enforcement officials to identify and apprehend jihadists in the United States, and to turn Muslims in America away from the jihad ideology and Islamic supremacism.

The fact that they do not do this, and instead work against genuine efforts to protect this country from a catastrophic attack, is revelatory. Despite their complaints, this mapping should continue, and expand.

The ACLU thinks this is an endorsement?

ACLU Thanks Mitt Romney for Acknowledging Its Good Work

    NEW YORK – In last night’s debate, presidential candidate Mitt Romney pointedly advocated the captivity of suspected terrorists at the infamous Guantánamo Bay detention center. While disparaging the concept of providing counsel to accused suspects in U.S. custody – a core principle of our constitutional democracy - Romney suggested, in jest, that he “presume[d]” the American Civil Liberties Union represented Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks.

    The following can be attributed to Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU:

    “Although the ACLU does not represent Mohammed, we are grateful to Governor Romney for recognizing our persistent fight on many fronts to restore the rule of law and combat the erosion of civil liberties that has plagued this country in the name of national security since September 11. Guantánamo is a shameful stain on our nation’s values and reputation throughout the world, and we – along with respected leaders of all political persuasions and millions of Americans – will continue to call for it to be shut down once and for all.”

So, to the ACLU it is a compliment to be associated with the scum puddle who planned the worst attack on our soil in American history.

Yeah, the fact that we jail terrorists is worse than the murder of thousands of Americans.

It is not a “core principle” of our nation’s laws to bestow constitutional rights on terrorists whose only connection to this country is the fact that they decided to be unlawful combatants in order to kill Americans (no these aren’t shoe salesman caught up in some willy-nilly dragnet), in most cases, thousands of miles from our shores. Anyway, since when do we live in a “constitutional democracy?” The ACLU might want to take a basic government/civics course before it puts out a press release. Lemme help them out — the United States is a federal constitutional republic.

Memo to the ACLU: it is not a GOOD thing to be the first organization on many minds when the enemies of this country is the topic, no matter how you’d like to spin it. No, this ridiculous response didn’t cause Romney’s comment to backfire, it affirmed his point that the ACLU seems, in our civilizational struggle against Jihadists, that it can be relied upon to carry the banner of our enemies…and proudly.

Well it makes sense doesn't it?  The ACLU has been "terrorizing" and bullying this country for years!

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