ACLU Has Admirable Goals But Misses The Mark

Joe Bell

The controversy over the separation of church and state received new energy in late May when the American Civil Liberties Union threatened to sue Los Angeles County unless it removed a cross from its official seal.

The ACLU, motivated by its inaccurate interpretation of the Constitution, labeled the cross an “impermissible endorsement of Christianity.” The L.A. County Board voted three to two to remove the cross. A county employee who wants the cross to remain filed a lawsuit to block its removal.

The offending seal depicts various historical elements of the county and state’s history. Pomona, goddess of gardens and fruit trees, dominates the seal. Other visuals include engineering instruments to symbolize construction and a tuna to represent the fishing industry. The cross, the L.A. County web site informs, “represents the influence of the church and the missions of California.”

Regardless of whether anyone believes in Pomona, her presence represents agriculture – an historical reality of California. By the same token, the cross also represents an historical truth. In his book, “The Americas,” Daniel Boorstin wrote that in the Spanish-American west “the mission, the presidio-fort, and the traditional pueblo gave form to Santa Fe, San Diego, Monterey, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, San Antonio and scores of lesser settlements.”

Despite the ACLU’s claim that it is objecting to the promotion of religion, the group is actually protesting historical accuracy. Christian heritage irritates the ACLU. The past cannot be changed but the ACLU is now making a sincere attempt to cleanse the public arena of what it considers objectionable history. One can imagine a colonial ACLU scolding John Adams, for writing, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Adams meant that the Constitution guaranteed such a wide range of freedoms that unless the people bridled their own emotions they would slide from freedom into chaos. The ACLU would likely have accused Adams of religious bigotry.

Los Angeles County is not trying to force Christian beliefs upon anyone and it would be wrong for any level of government to make such an effort. But there is nothing improper about the cross appearing on the seal to acknowledge the state’s past. The preamble to the California state constitution declares, “We, the People of the State of California, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure and perpetuate its blessings, do establish this Constitution.”

Expect the ACLU to eventually drag the state to court on the grounds that its constitution violates the separation of church and state.

The key issue here is the separation of church and state. The First Amendment to the Constitution declares: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

The phrase “separation of church and state,” which so animates the left, is not in the Constitution. The document simply says Congress will not make any law favoring one religion over another. The Founding Fathers wisely rejected the prospect of the federal government establishing a national religion.

In “The Culture of Disbelief,” Yale University Law Professor Stephen Carter wrote, the “metaphorical separation of church and state originated in an effort to protect religion from the state, not the state from religion. The religion clauses of the First Amendment were crafted to permit maximum freedom to the religious.”

In his book, “Democracy’s Discontent,” Harvard University Professor of Government Michael Sandel noted the requirement that government maintain a neutral position on religion only appeared in the mid-1900s.

“Not until 1947 did the Supreme Court hold that government must be neutral toward religion,” Sandel wrote. “(The) Bill of Rights did not apply to the states, and at the time of its adoption, six of the 13 states maintained religious establishments. Far from prohibiting these arrangements, the First Amendment was enacted in part to protect state religious establishments from federal interference.”

Sandel said that since the 1947 case, Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township, the principle that the government must be neutral towards religion has seldom been challenged.

By objecting to the cross on the seal the ACLU is not promoting neutrality towards religion. It is inviting intolerance through a flawed interpretation of the Constitution. In the ACLU’s lexicon, “neutrality” becomes “opposition.”

Consider the 1963 Supreme Court case, School District of Abington Township v. Schempp. A Pennsylvania statute required that at least 10 Bible verses be read, without comment, in public schools at the start of every day. Any student could be excused from the readings by presenting a written request from a parent or guardian. The Court ruled the statute violated the First Amendment because the government must be neutral towards religion. Sandel pointed out that Justice Potter Stewart dissented in the name of neutrality.

Stewart declared consent to religious exercises is required “if the schools are truly to be neutral in the matter of religion. A refusal to permit religious exercises thus is seen, not as the realization of state neutrality, but rather as the establishment of a religion of secularism, or at the least, as government support of the belief of those who think that religious exercises should be conducted only in private.”

The ACLU’s threat against L.A. County goes beyond a call for religious impartiality because the county is not promoting religion – it is acknowledging history. The seal depicts various historical references, of which the cross is only one. The organization is trying to delete a Christian historical reference.

The ACLU says, “We work daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States. Our job is to conserve America’s original civic values - the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”

That is an important agenda and all Americans should support those goals. In a nation as diverse as America it is also essential that a conversation over how to best achieve those goals continue. The case can be made that the ACLU has swerved off course in its effort to defend religious freedom and meet its stated objectives.

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Joseph Bell has hosted a radio talk show and is a former editorial writer/columnist for several Connecticut newspapers. A former liberal Democrat, Bell has not been on the conservative side of the aisle for very long. He voted for Clinton/Gore in 1992. Abandoning the convictions that he had held and defended through adolescence and into adulthood was not easy. Sincere soul-searching and a commitment to distinguish fact from fiction compelled him to accept that liberal ideology was bankrupt.

jbellopedresponse@hotmail.com