Anyone who has spent any time in Vegas - and let's just say I've been there a time or ten - has run the porno gauntlet down the strip having fliers for escort services and strip clubs shoved into their hands. But Jim Webber and Tom Griner can also be found among them, holding signs with messages like "Jesus died for your sins". That is, until they got arrested a couple of weeks ago for violating a city ordinance against holding signs up that are wider than your body. And guess who is defending these preachers? The ACLU. And rightfully so. And this is a great example of how the anti-ACLU crowd handles information that runs contrary to their "the ACLU hates Christians" message. Here's what StopTheACLU had to say about it:
OK, ACLU backers, we concede, you're doing a good deed by supporting these Las Vegas street preachers. A miracle indeed. But what else are you currently doing to protect religious freedom, our moral infrastructure and national security in America?
But in fact, there isn't anything miraculous about this. The ACLU does it all the time. In fact, this isn't even the first time they've fought on behalf of street preachers in Las Vegas. In 1993, the ACLU won a lawsuit declaring the sidewalks in Vegas to be an open forum on behalf of labor protestors they were defending and they have repeatedly come to the defense of street preachers using that same ruling in their defense:
Early this year, however, it became clear that casinos, private security companies and some police officers weren't aware of the ruling - or were choosing to ignore it. Casino security repeatedly told the preachers that they were on private property and had to leave. Police officers insisted that the preachers move even after the preachers produced copies of the court opinion. Griner was even cited with obstruction, a misdemeanor, for blocking the sidewalk.Griner and fellow preacher Jim Webber began videotaping their encounters with security personnel and police officers. Peck and Allen Lichtenstein, Nevada ACLU's general counsel, became a free-speech SWAT team, descending on the Strip on a moment's notice to make impassioned, impromptu arguments that the preachers could stay - confrontations that drew crowds of curious tourists.
Nor is this close to the first time the ACLU has defended street preachers around the country. The Indiana Civil Liberties Union has defended Pastor John Lewis, a street preacher who delivers rambling sermons against homosexuality and abortion, two issues on which the ACLU disagrees with him completely. The ACLU of Washington has fought on behalf of street preachers who asserted a right to preach on the Plaza in downtown Spokane. In Virginia, the ACLU has defended the right of the Cornerstone Baptist Church to use state park property for performing baptisms.
And this just scratches the surface. Yet to listen to StopTheACLU, it's only happened once and it was a "miracle". Sorry, that's nonsense. This is something the ACLU does every single day around the country. I know it's not convenient for the picture they're trying to paint of an organization out to destroy Christianity, but it has the great benefit of being true.
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I understand the issue of the post, but at some point people just want to be left alone.
I'll relate a little story. A number of years ago, we were in the Englischer Garten, a huge park in Munich. Something like NYC's Central Park, but nicer. There is a large field there on which people would sun themselves, usually in the nude. There was a rather substantial brook running through the field. We were there one day , and at one point some obnoxious religious people, an American and a German translator, started ranting at the sunbathers. So the sunbathers threw them into the brook. The ranters climbed out of the brook, and the sunbathers threw them back into the brook. The ranters got the message--that the sunbathers didn't want to be ranted to--and left.
Government didn't do it. The sunbathers themselves did. As the Bible says, there is a time for every purpose under heaven. But I guess that the ranters didn't realize that wasn't the right time.
Thanks for the link!
Actually this isn't a religious issue...the pronmasters of the strip (I just know there is a great story there) don't have signs bigger than their bodies...the preachers did....they broke a LAW....simple as that...the ACLU is out on a PR run with this crap.....end of story.
I've been a member for several years. A million times I've heard "hey, the ACLU did this one good thing. how come the rest of the time they're trying to destroy the country." Just an example of how a coherent, focused conservative message has successfully painted liberals as lunatics. We liberals are not currently driven by a coherent set of principles. Our candidates instead present a grab bag of technocratic solutions, and fail.
steve, you are very astute...and honest....and absolutely correct.
Kender,
Writing "LAW" in capital letters really doesn't do much for your argument. Perhaps Las Vegas really does have an ironclad (safey?) argument for stopping people from holding up signs wider than their body -- but it sounds like unconstitutional restraint of free speech to me. To say that the ACLU is on a "PR run" for defending them is unsupportable. The ACLU is defending them because it is what they exist to do: protect freedom of expression, including religious expression. To suggest they are doing it for PR implies you think it is out of character for the organization, which, as Ed has shown, it certainly isn't.
You're a better man than I. I would have read the term "moral infrastructure" and given up.
Kender wrote:
The law restricts the right to public protest on land that the courts have already declared to be a public forum, so the law is invalid. That is the ACLU's argument and they are right. You're right that it has nothing to do with religion, however. They've also defended labor protestors in the same city for violating the same law. What anti-ACLU folks often miss is that such cases are never about the specific content of the speech, they're about the principle of free speech itself. They have defended that even when the content of the speech is something they oppose completely. The attorney who defended the Nazis right to march in Skokie for the ACLU was himself Jewish. The content of the Nazis' speech made his blood boil. But the right to free speech and the right to peacably assemble was more important to him, just as in this case the fact that those street preachers despise the ACLU and rant against them doesn't stop the ACLU from supporting their rights. That's the true test of principle.
Great post! I found you via Chris and will add you to my blogroll. The ACLU is one of the most misunderstood organizations in our country. I applaud its efforts and fully agree that your common anti-ACLU guy has no idea that it supports all types of free speech. I recall that it defended the KKK's right to its name on one of the Adopt a Highway signs in exchange for trash removal. The ACLU's occasional blatantly partisan move, however, hurts its cause. I was disappointed by its attempt to block the voter recall of Gov. Davis in CA even though I did not personally agree with the recall.