If actions speak louder than words, then the actions of the American Civil Liberties Union and many of its allies these days are shouting from the rooftops: “We have no interest in what the American people want. Shut up and do what we say.”

One could hardly envision a better expose of the agenda of the left than the one they are currently presenting for the world to see in Texas. A group calling itself “Save Texas Marriage” is deceiving people into believing that a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would prohibit the creation or recognition of “any legal status identical or similar to marriage” would endanger any form of marriage. But as the writer of the amendment says, a judge who came to that conclusion would have to have had a “lobotomy” to read it that way. It’s a scare tactic, plain and simple.

Despite all the rhetoric about defending the Constitution, democracy, and the right to choose, the ACLU, Lambda Legal, and groups like “Save Texas Marriage” have demonstrated repeatedly that they have absolutely no desire for Americans to either choose or be heard.

State after state, time and again, where voters have a chance to vote on a law or constitutional amendment defining marriage as one man and one woman, these groups and other supporters of same-sex “marriage” swoop in to try to muzzle the people with scare tactics or even lawsuits to stop the vote. Clearly, neither choice nor democracy is what such groups are interested in. Every media blitz they push or lawsuit they file trying to stop the people from voting on marriage reveals their motives more clearly than anything their detractors could do or say.

These radical groups want courts to redefine marriage, create a new meaning for family, and establish countless new “rights.” They want to impose their vision for America upon the vast majority who do not share that vision. And they don’t want the people to come between them and their favorite judges.

Opponents of marriage protection laws and amendments in numerous states have filed a barrage of lawsuits in fruitless attempts to achieve that goal. They do this precisely because they know same-sex “marriage” loses whenever a state puts it before the voters. They do it because they think they know better than the American people about what’s best for them. They don’t want Americans to be heard for the simple reason that Americans don’t agree with them.

But the genie is out of the bottle. In every instance, where votes have been allowed – from California to Missouri to Louisiana – voters have approved the laws or amendments overwhelmingly. Consistent with the history of our republic, voters peacefully make their voices heard at the ballot box, louder than any rally or public demonstration could, and dispel any notions that they want a novel redefinition of marriage that means anything and ultimately nothing. A line attributed to George Washington puts it aptly: “In a free and republican government, you cannot restrain the voice of the multitude.”

Americans know instinctively that redefining marriage does not redefine it as much as it destroys it. Unlike the groups attempting to stop amendment votes across the country, the destruction of marriage as mankind has understood it for centuries is not something Americans are anxious to see.

Groups such as the ACLU, Lambda Legal, and others cloak themselves in language about defending rights and freedom, but they openly brush aside their noble ideals and opt to illegitimately use the judiciary to attain their ends. Their actions reveal a primary philosophy: the ends justify the means. Apparently the cause is just too important to be left to the American people to decide. A judge will do.

No one would be pursuing marriage protection laws and constitutional amendments if such groups had refrained from using the courts to overrule the American people. But, because a sufficient number of courts have gone along, the people have no choice but to amend their constitutions in an attempt to stave off the attack. If the “nightmare” of the landslide adoptions of state constitutional amendments protecting marriage disturbs the left, they can blame themselves for pushing the first boulder over the edge.

ACLU Founder Roger Baldwin said, “So long as we have enough people willing to fight for their rights, we’ll be called a democracy.” Funny – that’s all the American people are doing when they oppose the efforts of groups like the ACLU to quash them.

Throughout our history, the United States has been a unique nation. We are the only modern nation founded not on a common heritage, ethnicity, outside intervention or mandated religion, but rather a shared set of ideals. These powerful beliefs were outlined in the Declaration of Independence and codified in the U.S. Constitution.

From the minutemen at Lexington and Concord to the Marines currently in Afghanistan and Iraq, our armed forces have fought, bled and all too often died to protect these foundational documents and the ideals they contain. The unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Free exercise of religion. Freedom of speech. And the right to shape a government and laws that are of the people, by the people and for the people.

However, there are some who seek to undermine America’s ideals and the sovereignty with which we preserve them. Increasingly, leading jurists, law professors and other legal experts are turning to foreign courts and international bodies to subvert the Constitution. And helping to lead this charge against American sovereignty and its unique form of liberty is the American Civil Liberties Union.

In 2003, the ACLU sponsored a major conference titled “Human Rights at Home: International Law in U.S. Courts” at the Carter Center in Atlanta. A declared purpose of the conference was to “[use] international law and human rights norms to advance justice in U.S. courts.” Far from featuring a collection of obscure leftists, invited panelists included Federal Judge Myron Thompson (of Justice Roy Moore fame) and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer among many other leading jurists from around the country.

The organizers did not view the conference as simply an academic exercise. ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero stated, “Our goal is no less than to forge a new era of social justice where the principles of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights are recognized and enforced in the United States.”

And even more remarkably, the ACLU and their its have convinced many state and federal level justices to weave these international laws into domestic court decisions.

In Lawrence v. Texas, the ACLU filed a brief with the Supreme Court to promote the overturning of a state sodomy prohibition. In a 6-3 ruling, the court arbitrarily struck down the law along with hundreds of years of American and common law precedent on the issue. But more upsetting was the reasoning behind it. Justice Anthony Kennedy revealed that the decision was based in part on an Irish case and a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights. In another case, our Supreme Court justices referenced Jamaica and Zimbabwe.

No offense intended to those august foreign bodies, but none have jurisdiction in our country or courts. None is representative of votes by the American people or our political leaders. Their decisions have no relation whatsoever to the Constitution of the United States, and in fact, many international legal concepts now in favor were rejected by the authors of America’s Constitution.

With this rudderless jurisprudence in Lawrence, Kennedy and colleagues could have just as easily cited nations that severely punish sodomy and ruled the opposite way. Basing domestic decisions on foreign laws is completely arbitrary, allowing courts to search the horizon for faraway lands with rulings that conform to their whim. The ACLU sees this as one more way to further dismantle what the framers of the Constitution envisioned.

This past March, Kennedy and the Supreme Court again cited international law in Roper v. Simmons, involving capital punishment for juvenile murderers. An ACLU press release trumpeted the development, stating, “[I]t is worth noting that six members of the United States Supreme Court … expressly upheld the relevance of international law and practice in determining which punishments are cruel and unusual under our own Constitution.”

Opinions differ strongly, even within conservative faith communities, on the merits of the death penalty, but this case shows the growing danger of international bodies impacting our domestic law. Justice Kennedy stated, “It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion.”

In his scathing dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, “[This] court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our nation’s moral standards – and in the course of discharging that awesome responsibility purports to take guidance from the views of foreign courts and legislatures.”

Scalia is all too accurate in his assessment. By selectively citing international law, our courts can become an unelected oligarchy. It is the Constitution of the United States these justices swore an oath to uphold. And the ACLU, frustrated by their inability to advance their radical agenda fast enough, far enough, via the Constitution or the ballot box, is working hard to turn this anti-American and foreign vision into an unpleasant reality.

For Thomas Jefferson and his fellow Founders, three of the most pre-eminent rights were as “self-evident” as they were “unalienable”: “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

But for the American Civil Liberties Union, pretended heir to Jefferson and self-proclaimed protector of our nation’s civil rights, it is increasingly and tragically apparent that “one out of three ain’t bad” – and even there, they have problems.

For the ACLU, the pursuit of certain select happinesses (and not those of the sort envisioned by the Founders) for a certain select few is worth the sacrifice of virtually any liberty, and worth more than millions of innocent lives.

On matters of life and death, the ACLU has married itself to an agenda that undermines both the rights and defenders of the weak, the vulnerable, the voiceless … the unborn, the aged, the ill – in short, the very types of people the ACLU professes to protect but doesn’t.

ACLU attorneys insist that courts and elected leaders have a right to stop elections and constitutional amendments, circumvent the votes and override the will of the people to create same-sex “marriage,” but not to save innocent lives. They demand free speech for anyone opposing almost any war but legally throttle any voice raised against partial-birth abortion or in disapproval of certain choices of sexual behavior.

Even with a scorecard, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep track of which civil liberties the ACLU still favors – or even purports to favor – and which ones it deems expendable.

On abortion, for example, the ACLU couches its aggressive activities (including explicit approval of FACE and tacit assent to RICO, which have been used to severely limit the free speech of peaceful pro-life advocates) as a noble struggle for “reproductive freedom.” But it’s hard to classify any freedom as “reproductive” that despises unborn children and endorses their savage destruction up to the moment when all but their skull has emerged from the womb. Indeed, it’s hard to credit as “freedom” a movement so single-minded in its determination to silence, even punish, so many expressions of alternative viewpoints.

A far-reaching victory for the ACLU’s abortion-driven agenda came in 1971 with U.S. v. Vuitch – ironically, a case in which the Supreme Court upheld a law against abortion. Nonetheless, the court ruled that “the mother’s life and health” caveat that had long been attached to anti-abortion laws could be expanded to include an expectant mother’s psychological well-being. So despite the rightness of the ruling itself, the reasoning behind it led to disaster. Eventually, this definition of “health” was used to say essentially that a woman was legally justified in having her child’s life ended if for any reason she felt bothered by the prospect of giving birth to the child.

It was a breathtaking new development. Imagine if murder was legal, so long as the killer could show the victim’s continued life would have had a negative impact on the killer’s psychological life and health.

The decision paved the way for Roe v. Wade and its terrible and bloody aftermath – but that wasn’t enough for the ACLU. Over the last nearly 35 years, in the tradition of Margaret Sanger, they’ve gone on to assert that abortion might actually be healthier for a mom than carrying a baby to full-term and is certainly cheaper than the costs of raising a child.

The ACLU even goes so far as to celebrate the “courage” of abortion providers. Sponsoring a “National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers,” the ACLU wrote in 2002, “We must change the climate overall from one where abortion providers are vilified to one where they are honored and upheld as the heroes they are.”

There are many emotions one can associate with abortion – fear, desperation, loneliness, sadness, regret, anger, depression. But enthusiasm? How does any organization, in good conscience, celebrate those who, for money, will pith the brain of a healthy, full-term child like you would a frog in a high-school lab experiment? At least PETA is there for the frog.

Yet there’s no other way to describe the ACLU attitude toward death. They eagerly endorse euthanasia, as if the tragedy of assisted-suicide were some kind of triumph of the human spirit. They fought gleefully and brutally for the “right” of Terri Schiavo’s husband to starve her to death, as if there were some kind of glory in the mortal torture of that most helpless woman.

How can any organization be so vocally committed to happiness and “freedom” but yet be so deeply opposed to recognizing the infinite value of – and the right to – life itself?

Mercifully, that’s a question that’s begun to plague a growing number of the ACLU’s own members. Indeed, unless the group finds a way to embrace the sanctity of life as enthusiastically as it does the sanctity of “rights,” more and more people are going to wonder if the ACLU’s increasingly predatory agenda is really … viable.

According to their own literature, the American Civil Liberties Union’s job “is to conserve America’s original civic values – the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.” Preserving our values is a very admirable goal. But in spite of their lofty rhetoric, the ACLU is not such a protector of America’s values.

To the contrary, no organization, together with its allies, has consistently done more harm to our traditions and values. Just in the past few weeks, the ACLU has again proven their contempt for American values in several arenas.

In September, the ACLU filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the Supreme Court to allow a ban on military recruiters at university campuses. The ACLU’s opposition to military readiness is long and well known, dating from their founder Roger Baldwin’s refusal to report for an examination for Selective Service in World War I. The current case involves the Solomon Amendment, a 1994 statute that allows the blocking of federal funds to campuses that deny military recruiters “equal access.”

Several law schools have barred recruiters on the claim that the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy – a policy forced on the military by the Clinton administration and upheld by three federal circuits against homosexual demands – violates the schools’ guidelines on “nondiscrimination.” But these same schools hypocritically insist on receiving generous funding from the same federal government whose policies to preserve our national defense they are opposing.

In one of their more convoluted arguments, the ACLU asserts that universities should be allowed to discriminate against the United States military in order to protect academic “anti-discrimination” policies. Matt Coles, the ACLU’s Lesbian and Gay Rights Project director, said, “Universities should be commended for holding the line against discrimination.” Meanwhile, Coles was figuratively standing in the schoolhouse door barring entry to some of our most valued citizens and hindering the effective recruitment of students for our nation’s protection.

Thankfully, Harvard University voluntarily backed down from this form of segregation, allowing military recruiters to return. We can only hope that other schools follow this tolerant and patriotic policy. But the ACLU is doing all it can to undermine our national values, even in a time of war.

In another startling case, the ACLU – as it does more often than not – is opposing the democratic process and traditional values in Florida. A group of concerned Floridians is gathering signatures to bring a constitutional amendment protecting marriage before the state’s voters. Not surprisingly, the ACLU opposes this constitutionally valid effort to keep marriage from being tampered with by politicians, activist judges, and other groups – well, like the ACLU.

The ACLU, as it has in efforts from Alaska to Georgia, repeatedly since 1995, is opposing the amendment process established by the framers of the state constitution and instead wants activist judges to invent and alter traditions, laws, and fabricate “new rights.” And since they oppose the amendment process, ACLU attorneys are trying to prevent Florida voters from having any say in the matter.

The ACLU filed a brief before the Florida Supreme Court to derail the marriage protection amendment before it can even get to the ballot. Their highly technical claim is that the initiative violates a “single subject rule” in the Florida constitution – a common tactic of the ACLU and its allies that has failed time and time again. Earlier this year, a unanimous decision from the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld that state’s amendment against the claim that it violated a “single subject” rule. No, the ACLU’s true basis for opposition is obvious:

“[The initiative] blocks same-sex couples from civil unions and threatens domestic partner registries,” said Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida. The ACLU goes further on their website, stating, “The ACLU works for full legal recognition of LGBT relationships through domestic partnerships, civil unions, and, ultimately, marriage.” The ACLU will fight for full-fledged same-sex “marriage” regardless of the laws, the constitutions, or the voters’ decisions or values.

When the ACLU is not attacking the military or marriage, they are working on manipulating our children’s values and behavior. Last month, they launched “Not in My State,” a nationwide effort to eliminate what they call “dangerous” abstinence-only education in schools.

Yes, they really said that.

The same ACLU that adamantly opposes any government regulation of the most dreadful and violent forms of obscenity, opposes laws designed to protect children from exposure to such obscenity, and argues there is “no harm” from such material, has launched an elaborate website for their new project, offering a pre-written op-ed for your local newspaper, detailed talking points, and an area of “cool stuff” including buttons, postcards, and bumper stickers.

Louise Melling, director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, further explained the project in a recent article. Her words would be laughable if they weren’t so alarming:

Today, in an effort to keep dangerous abstinence-only-until-marriage curricula from harming young people, ACLU affiliates across the country have launched a letter-writing campaign asking schools and state health departments to reject these unsafe programs and replace them with proven effective, medically accurate, age-appropriate sexuality education.

The ACLU’s world is one in which abstinence is “dangerous,” marriage is meaningless, and officials with publicly supported schools have a right to demand and take federal funds on one hand while telling the people who pay the taxes that fund their schools to take a hike.

There are many descriptions for this inverted set of values, but “American” isn’t one of them. By any standard, this is all far removed from America’s “original civic values.”

During the confirmation process of John Roberts for chief justice of the United States, the American Civil Liberties Union emerged as a leader among the anti-Roberts crowd.

The day President Bush announced the nomination, before thousands of pages of records were requested, much less released, the ACLU immediately expressed “deep concern about some of the civil-liberties positions advocated by Judge John Roberts.” Later they encouraged the Senate Judiciary Committee to “fully probe his record” and again expressed “serious concerns” about Roberts’ record.

While intelligent people can disagree over whether or not Judge Roberts is ideal for the Supreme Court, the ACLU had little credibility in this debate.

The ACLU likes to project itself as a patriotic organization patrolling the Constitution to protect our cherished rights. The reality, however, is almost the opposite.

Early in its history, the ACLU’s narrow ideological agenda was shaped by America’s leftist movement, which set out to use the broad rights guaranteed by the Constitution to reshape our republic. The ACLU’s original goal was to protect revolutionary radicals, including Soviet agents, through civil-liberties rulings.

Until Stalin joined Hitler, ACLU founder Roger Baldwin was an outspoken admirer of the Soviet system. As I mentioned in a previous column, he once wrote, “I seek social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class and sole control by those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.”

Baldwin spoke highly of his visits to the Soviet Union, even as the regime there was killing millions. He pushed his extreme – and cynical – view of civil liberties at the same time the Soviet Union recognized no civil liberties at all. “Repressions in Soviet Russia are weapons of struggle in a transition period to socialism,” he claimed.

The ACLU hasn’t strayed far from such foundations.

True to its discredited old-Left template, the ACLU still seeks to destroy the traditional family – and with it American culture. It’s reflected in lawsuits across the country in which the ACLU argues that the state – not parents – should have ultimate control over children.

The group has supported other groups that force children to be exposed to sex “education” seminars, such as the “Hot, Sexy and Safer” presentation in Massachusetts where young students heard sexual acts described in graphic detail – without parental consent. A teenage boy was even encouraged to lick a condom in front of his peers.

The ACLU’s response to the anger of parents? The Constitution “does not mention the right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children.” This bizarre twisting of the Constitution is a direct assault on the freedom of parents to raise their children according to their values.

Undermining values that contribute to a healthy society is an ACLU goal. The organization has defended the North American Man-Boy Love Association after two convicted pedophiles accessed information on NAMBLA’s website on how to seduce and sodomize young boys. The ACLU supported NAMBLA’s “right” to post this information, which the two men used to seduce, rape and murder an innocent 10-year-old boy.

The group has also used its legal streetfighters to defend individual pedophiles. In Lafayette, Ind., the ACLU represented a thrice-convicted child molester. The man admitted he had been cruising public parks and fantasizing about children there. When the mayor sought a restraining order to ban him from the parks, the ACLU found a sympathetic judge to restore his “right” to prowl the park, claiming the order was “discriminatory.”

Americans may be split on the subject of whether or not abortion should be legal. But the ACLU believes that some people have the right to kill infants even after they are born. In Indiana’s “Baby Doe” case, the ACLU defended parents who let their baby starve to death after it was born with Down syndrome.

Sometimes the ACLU is even explicit about its disdain for democracy. After Alaskans overwhelmingly voted for an amendment affirming heterosexual marriage, former ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser remarked, “Today’s results prove that certain fundamental issues should not be left up to a majority vote.”

In all these examples, the ACLU shows clear contempt for the views of the majority of Americans.

One could say it is only because of the greatness of America – its tradition of tolerance born of religious tolerance – that an organization like the ACLU operates here.

But the ACLU is hardly a torchbearer for American democracy. Its insights into who should or shouldn’t be on the Supreme Court belong not in the mainstream press, but on the pages of a ranting ideological pamphlet yellowing in some old-Left bookstore.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

– First Amendment, U.S. Constitution

As demonstrated in the first entry in our Bill of Rights, Americans are a religious people with a history steeped in faith. The first act of the Continental Congress called for prayer. President Lincoln enacted a day of prayer and fasting, and President Truman created an annual National Day of Prayer. The constitutions of all 50 states directly recognize and honor God in some way.

The First Amendment is a major recognition of these values. The amendment guarantees every American freedom of religion; however, the American Civil Liberties Union is aggressively twisting it inside out to force the government to restrict religious expression.

Big surprise.

Despite promoting itself as a great defender of individual rights, the ACLU is the foremost religious censor in America. This column only affords enough space to mention but a few of the innumerable examples of the ACLU’s anti-religious zealotry. But they are enough to illustrate the lengths to which the ACLU will go to attempt to impose this foolhardy agenda on America.

In the late 1960s, plaques bearing non-sectarian passages from Psalms were privately donated and installed at Grand Canyon National Park. (Even if you haven’t heard of this story, you can probably guess where this is heading.) An ACLU paralegal “discovered” the three-decades-old plaques and e-mailed the National Park Service to demand an explanation. This simple correspondence so rattled the Park Service that they removed the plaques without a legal fight.

In effect, one e-mail from a leftist legal group caused a governmental agency to restrict the free exercise of religion. Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund assured the Park Service that the plaques did not violate the Constitution. To the contrary, the plaques are a form of expression that the Constitution guarantees. Thankfully, the Park Service allowed the plaques back in – at least for the time being.

In another alarming example, the ACLU joined a suit against Catholic Charities, demanding that the organization provide contraception coverage in any group prescription-drug program offered to its employees. Since the teachings of the Catholic Church prohibit the use of such contraceptives, the ACLU was demanding that the state force the group to violate the tenets of its founding faith.

Sadly, the Supreme Court of California agreed with the ACLU’s reasoning that since Catholic Charities employs and ministers to non-Catholics, it was not allowed to faithfully follow Catholic doctrine. Another ACLU body blow designed to subvert religious freedom.

Yeshiva University, a conservative Jewish institution, did not allow two lesbians to live in married student housing since it was forbidden by their faith’s teachings. The ACLU and other activist groups sued the private institution, bringing it all the way to the New York Court of Appeals.

Attorney Harvey Blitz, who supported Yeshiva in the case, rightfully stated that accommodating same-sex couples in this manner would amount to a “promotion of the gay and lesbian lifestyle,” which is “inconsistent with Orthodox Jewish principles.”

Despite the obvious meaning of the First Amendment, the court sided with the ACLU and against traditional religious beliefs. Yeshiva was forced to act contrary to its religious beliefs and house same-sex couples as if they were married.

This dramatic erosion of religious liberty is the result of the ACLU’s deliberate, incremental strategy. The group often starts its attacks against cash-strapped organizations or legally unsophisticated governmental agencies. Many times, a forceful letter from a big-firm ACLU lawyer is enough to cause an administrator to restrict the public expression of religion.

Even if the embattled organization is sympathetic to a believer’s plight, officials often determine it isn’t worth the hassle or considerable expense to fight the ACLU in a protracted battle. When people do stand their constitutionally protected ground, the ACLU often finds judges and courts likely to support their leftist legal interpretations. And every successful case serves as a precedent for the next.

The ACLU’s destructive assault on the religious heritage of this nation must be challenged – and vigorously. We as a people must stand our ground to protect our constitutionally guaranteed right to freely practice our religion in public and private.

When we do, the true colors of the ACLU are often exposed for the world to see. Frustrated at his lack of success in getting a school board in Tangipahoa Parish, La., to refrain from opening its meetings with prayer, the ACLU of Louisiana’s executive director Joe Cook desperately described the members of the board this way: “They believe that they answer to a higher power, in my opinion, which is the kind of thinking that you had with the people who flew the airplanes into the buildings in this country, and the people who did the kind of things in London.”

Such outlandish comments reveal how the ACLU truly feels about those who acknowledge a higher power than themselves in this country. This kind of thinking is being – and must continue to be – exposed. Because if their legal snowball is allowed to continue unchallenged, the First Amendment won’t be worth the parchment on which our Founding Fathers paid so dearly to write.

It’s tough to be a parent.

In fact, raising your child these days to develop into a healthy, happy, responsible adult has never been harder. Violence and sex saturates television and movies, popular music is filled with profanity and rage – even video games often focus on the darkest edges of human behavior.

It is bad enough that the culture seems at war with parents. But more disturbing are the actions of courts to damage the link between parent and child. And no group has done more to inflict damage on parental rights though the courts than the American Civil Liberties Union working with its zealous allies.

The ACLU defines itself as the “nation’s guardian of liberty” dedicated to preserve the individual rights and liberties of all Americans. But in reality, this leftist legal organization has devoted itself to destroying the rights of parents to raise children in the manner they deem appropriate.

This is not some sort of unfounded “right wing” allegation. Sadly, there are many examples that illustrate the ACLU’s desire for the state to supersede the parent in raising children.

In December, the ACLU praised a Washington State Supreme Court ruling that prevents parents from listening to their minor children’s telephone conversations. The high court determined that a mother violated the state’s Privacy Act when she monitored a discussion between her 14-year-old daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend. The content of this conversation helped convict the boyfriend of a violent crime.

The ACLU filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case against the mother and in favor of overturning the conviction. Douglas Klunder of the ACLU explained the group’s position stating, “I don’t think the state should be in the position of encouraging parents to act surreptitiously and eavesdrop on their children.”

Attorney Randall Gaylord, the prosecutor on the parent’s side, was rightfully incredulous. “I’m concerned that a 14-year-old’s right to privacy now trumps the parent’s right to be a parent,” he said.

The ACLU is also undermining parents’ right to teach their children traditional moral and religious beliefs. One of the latest battlegrounds in the organization’s war against parents is Boyd County, Ky.

The fight began when the local school district settled an ACLU lawsuit over the right of a student group, the Gay-Straight Alliance, to meet on campus. Part of the agreement mandated that all students, staff and teachers view a one-sided, hour-long video promoting “tolerance” of homosexual behavior.

Understandably, many parents objected to the content, resulting in the desire of about a third of the students to opt-out of the program. Angry at this exercise of basic parental rights, the ACLU threatened new legal action if every student didn’t view the propaganda.

“Parents don’t get to say I don’t want you to teach evolution or this, that, or whatever else,” said James Esseks, litigation director for the ACLU’s Lesbian and Gay Rights Project. “If parents don’t like it, they can home school, they can go to a private school, they can go to a religious school.”

Mr. Esseks doesn’t seem to get it. Public schools should be just that: open to the public. That means open to everyone. Is the public school system merely for students who aren’t Christian and who can afford to go to private schools? Indoctrination in the homosexual agenda is not the same as reading, writing, and arithmetic, and most Americans know that. Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund are currently battling on behalf of the parents to ensure that their constitutional rights and those of their children are not violated by this so-called “diversity training.”

Even on decisions of life and death, the ACLU wants to cut parents out of the picture. The group is strongly opposed to any type of law mandating parental notification when a minor seeks an abortion. In their fact sheet on the issue, the ACLU seems scandalized that parents might have a role to play in this most major of decisions: “These bills would give parents such absolute control over their children’s lives that, in some instances, the minors’ own constitutional rights would be threatened and their health and well-being endangered.”

Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, elaborated on the group’s position: “When the state forces parents to be involved, the consequences are often catastrophic.”

Parents, Mr. Simon, are not the problem.

In an age where leaders everywhere are crying out for parental involvement in the lives of their children, the ACLU stands out-of-touch – proud to be an obstacle pursuing its own agenda without regard for any of the consequences.

Sadly, the ACLU has proven time and time again their ill intent toward American parents. Despite their claims of standing up for the individual, this arrogant band of leftists is attacking a most basic human right: that of nurturing and protecting one’s child in an often-dangerous world.

Imagine that tonight, in stadiums all over the United States, Major League Baseball games are disrupted by an invasion of football players, running by dozens and hundreds out onto the diamonds.

“We want to play, too!” the game-crashers cry.

“But this is baseball,” a pitcher points out. “It’s a totally different game.”

“Not fair!” the invaders insist. “We demand that you let us play! And here – use our ball. Re-line the field. And play by our NFL rules!”

“It won’t work,” says a shortstop. “You can’t pitch pigskin.”

“Foul!” scream the footballers to ESPN cameras. “Unsportsmanlike! Boycott baseball!”

The crowd grows restless and bellows their deafening disapproval. The umps’ thumbs are flying: “You’re outta the game!” But the helmeted Huns dig in their cleats.

“These fans are narrow-minded!” they yell. “These umps are bought and paid for! Where’s the justice? What are these ballplayers so afraid of?”

“Football-phobics?” read the morning sports pages, featuring photos of outraged outfielders, shaking their fists at runningbacks spiking balls at home plate.

Absurd? Maybe … but a not-dissimilar scenario is unfolding all over America as increasingly aggressive advocates of homosexual behavior demand legal, moral and cultural endorsement of same-sex “marriage” and other aspects of a demanding legal agenda.

Unable to woo a wary electorate, they are taking the country to court, where their American Civil Liberties Union allied attorneys are trying to force a shotgun wedding of homosexual behavioral mores to traditional American values.

Despite the resounding decision of voters in 18 states to uphold marriage as the union of one man and one woman, despite the laws enacted by 37 legislatures, and despite the rulings of dozens of local, state, and federal judges, advocates of homosexual behavior and their ACLU attorneys demand that not only the laws of the United States, but the moral, behavioral and cultural code of civilization itself, be changed to suit their personal demands and preferences.

Watching their determined efforts to destroy an institution that is the cornerstone of American family life and society, one can’t help but wonder what exactly it is that the ACLU really cares about.

It’s certainly not the rule of law. In states like California, where the state constitution currently precludes marriage between members of the same sex, the ACLU encourages such “partners” to defy the document – and flaunt their defiance.

Nor does the ACLU care about the democratic process. In states where voters have rejected the homosexual legal agenda, ACLU attorneys work to circumvent the election results, trumping votes with the rulings of judges friendly to the homosexual cause.

Of course, ACLU attorneys would claim that they must forego the will of the majority to preserve the demands of the few. Yet clearly they don’t care any more about people practicing homosexual behavior than they do the rest of the populace. If they did, they would take note of the growing number of high-profile medical reports affirming the devastating physical toll of such behavior.

Instead, in their determination to ram acceptance of homosexual behavior down the collective throat of the American people, ACLU attorneys are actively promoting a self-destructive way of life that will ultimately destroy the health of – and even kill – many of their clients.

Just as obvious is the organization’s contempt for marriage itself. In fact, the ACLU has endorsed international legal efforts that would broaden the definition of marriage to include not only same-sex couples, but multiple partners and even temporary sexual relationships.

Clearly, the ACLU and its allies aren’t staying up nights worrying over the ravaging social and psychological impact of same-sex unions on families and children. Nor do they care about the coarsening of the culture they long to see freed from what they consider its bigoted moral and religious underpinnings.

Ironically, the ACLU and its allies don’t even care about the Constitution itself – a document designed to undergird and protect the very people, principles and processes these attorneys would circumvent, subvert and silence.

So, having divorced themselves from the best interests of their clients, their society and the law, what exactly do the ACLU’s attorneys love, honor and cherish? Social anarchy? Unbridled hedonism? The dismantling of the American family?

If anyone knows any reason why an organization that presents itself as the champion of open-minded love – while fomenting open hatred for the traditional family and reckless disregard for its homosexual clients – should not be allowed to wed its destructive agenda to America’s future, speak now.

Because the ACLU isn’t playing games with anything … except people’s lives and futures.

“No man who hates dogs and children,” W.C. Fields liked to say, “can be all bad.” The biggest difference between Mr. Fields and the American Civil Liberties Union is that the ACLU still likes dogs.

In case after case, in courtrooms all over the country, the ACLU continues to affirm its abiding hatred for the American family – for traditional moral values, for the sanctity of marriage and for life itself.

But perhaps, most alarmingly, for innocent children – especially children raised with a strong faith.

It is not just that the organization has taken leave of its moral conscience. The ACLU has grown so extreme, so systematic, so concentrated in its war on children that it is easier to believe its attorneys have taken leave of their senses.

How else to explain their determined defense of pornographic and outrageous websites, like that of the North American Man-Boy Love Association, which serenades aspiring pederasts in the subtleties of sodomy?

Convicted killer Charles Jaynes wrote in his diary that he drew “psychological comfort” from the NAMBLA website, studying it carefully before kidnapping and murdering 10-year-old Jeffrey Curley of Cambridge, Mass. The website, Jaynes said, helped him and his partner, Salvatore Sicari, overcome some of their lingering hesitations about committing such a crime.

Yet when Jeffrey’s parents sued NAMBLA for promoting materials that fanned the flames of rape and murder in Jaynes’ and Sicari’s twisted minds, the ACLU proudly leapt to the organization’s defense, citing First Amendment protections.

Yet, the ACLU states in one of their position papers that “freedom of speech does not prevent punishing conduct that intimidates, harasses or threatens another person, even if words are used.” How can speech that promotes the sodomizing of young boys not be interpreted as intimidation, harassment or threatening?

According to ACLU Massachusetts Legal Director John Reinstein, the Constitution sides with the publication of any material, however heinous, unless said material is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action.” Apparently, for the ACLU, “lawless action” doesn’t cover the sodomy and murder of a little boy.

What does the ACLU believe pornography is for? Stirring less perversion in the minds of those who absorb it? Cultivating purer, more selfless and giving love in human relationships?

That’s the incredible logic they are asking court after court to accept – that pornographic, pederastic sites are harmless publications produced by guileless individuals to bring innocent sexual pleasure to predatory deviants and the children they seduce.

That’s not just illogical, it’s a denial of human nature.

It brings to mind the old fallacy about people who throw meat to hungry tigers, hoping the tigers will become vegetarians. Sane people know that’s not how it works. In the real world, the tigers just get hungrier for flesh … and prey on our children.

The ACLU, though, professes to see innocence everywhere – except, of course, in the Boy Scouts of America. There, they insist, religious zealots are tutoring the bigots of tomorrow … by teaching them to build campfires and character.

But then, it’s not surprising that a group that embraces NAMBLA would be tied up in knots by the Boy Scouts, an organization grounded in a traditional morality, promoting faith, family, and self-reliance. Such old-fashioned American “bigotry” seems infinitely more repulsive to the ACLU that the depravities of child sexual abuse.

This is why ACLU attorneys and their allies are working furiously to force the Boy Scouts to accept scoutmasters who engage in homosexual behavior, despite studies showing that those who engage in such behavior are more likely to become pedophiles than those who don’t.

Behind the blitzkrieg against the Boy Scouts is an essential conflict of interest: The ACLU is paving the legal way for an atheistic, libertine society, which puts them at cross-purposes with the God-fearing, self-disciplined kids who help old ladies across the street.

So the ACLU is bent on banishing the beliefs of the Boy Scouts, of traditional families, and of traditional churches by labeling them “hate,” an insidious danger that poisons the impressionable minds of young, naive Americans.

Yet they assure us that the ideas promoted by atheists, by advocates of homosexual behavior, and by the disturbed deviants of NAMBLA are harmless, incapable of seducing or destroying innocent lives – or at least that it doesn’t matter to them when such seductions and destructions occur.

Both convictions cannot be true. If the beliefs of any group, however powerfully expressed, exert no tangible influence on the minds and behavior of others, then the idea of “hate speech” makes no sense. But if ideas can inspire lawless behavior, NAMBLA is a threat. That’s a paradox the ACLU can’t afford to face. And our children are suffering the consequences.

One of the great myths of the 20th – and now 21st – century is the belief that the American Civil Liberties Union was an organization that had a noble beginning, but somehow strayed off course.

That myth is untrue. The ACLU set a course to destroy America – her freedom and her values – right from the start.

From its very beginning, the ACLU had strong socialist and communist ties. As early as 1931, the U.S. Congress was alarmed by the ACLU’s devotion to communism. A report by the Special House Committee to Investigate Communist Activities stated

The American Civil Liberties Union is closely affiliated with the communist movement in the United States, and fully 90 percent of its efforts are on behalf of communists who have come into conflict with the law. It claims to stand for free speech, free press and free assembly, but it is quite apparent that the main function of the ACLU is an attempt to protect the communists.

Roger Baldwin and Crystal Eastman founded the ACLU in 1920 along with three other organizations dedicated to the most leftist of causes. The histories of these two individuals belie their claims of patriotism and respect for the Constitution.

Baldwin openly sought the utter destruction of American society. Fifteen years after the founding of the ACLU, Baldwin wrote:

I am for Socialism, disarmament and ultimately, for the abolishing of the State itself … I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class and sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.

Earl Browder, the general secretary of the Communist Party of the United States, admitted that the ACLU served as a “transmission belt” for the party. Baldwin agreed, claiming, “I don’t regret being a part of the communist tactic which increased the effectiveness of a good cause.”

Baldwin was a devoted follower of the anarchist Emma Goldman (or “Red Emma” as she was called), who was eventually deported to the Soviet Union in 1919 for her communist activities. Goldman was a consistent promoter of anarchism, radical education, “free love” and birth control. According to an online exhibit of Goldman’s papers, her career “served as inspiration for Roger Baldwin, a future founder of the American Civil Liberties Union.”

Eastman was a zealous feminist, an anti-war activist, and a great admirer of the Soviet revolution. Of her many leftist friends and associates, Eastman held the highest regard for Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. According to Eastman, “We [feminists] must all be followers of Margaret Sanger.”

Of course, Sanger was a passionate advocate of eugenics – the attempt to improve the human race through selective breeding. Abortion was a primary means to this “improvement,” leading Sanger to write, “The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”

Baldwin also was a great admirer of the Planned Parenthood founder. He heaped praise on Sanger: “She was a frail, beautiful, unassuming woman … She always had a quiet insistence on the rightness of what she was doing.”

This adoration of Sanger set the tone for the tragic history of the ACLU concerning the issue of abortion. To this day, the group fights for the most extreme of pro-abortion positions, including support for partial-birth abortion and opposition to parental consent for minors.

But the radical agenda hardly ends there. In his wedding vows, Baldwin called marriage as between one man and one woman “a grim mockery of essential freedom.” He added, “The highest relationship between a man and a woman is that which welcomes and understands each other’s loves.”

The result is that today the ACLU is a leading advocate of same-sex “marriage,” and has expressed support for polygamy and polyamory (“open” marriage) as well. The ACLU Policy Guide reads:

The ACLU believes that criminal and civil laws prohibiting or penalizing the practice of plural marriage [polygamy or polyamory] violate constitutional protections of freedom of expression and association, freedom of religion, and privacy for personal relationships among consenting adults.

While many accept the ACLU as a mainstream organization, their history tells a drastically different story. Organizations such as the Alliance Defense Fund are dedicated to exposing the myth that the ACLU is working hard for the First Amendment rights of Americans. Instead of being an organization that simply took a “wrong turn,” the ACLU has devoted itself from the very beginning to the devastation of America’s most cherished traditions, values, and laws.