|
Does
the U.S. Constitution protect free speech and allow people to organize
based upon a common value system? Given the American Civil Liberty
Union’s
actions, the answer apparently depends upon who is involved and what
values
are promoted.
The
ACLU is litigating on many fronts against the Boy Scouts of America
because
it excludes homosexuals as members or leaders and ejects existing ones
if found to be homosexual. The ACLU is also defending the North
American
Man-Boy Love Association in a wrongful death lawsuit consequent to an
October
1997 murder in Massachusetts.
Promising
a new bicycle [to replace the one some
say they stole], according to CNN
reports, Salvatore Sicari and Charles Jaynes enticed 10-year-old
Jeffrey
Curly into their vehicle.
Trial records reveal that the
men -- both in their
mid 20s at the time -- tried to sexually assault Jeffrey, who resisted.
Sicari and Jaynes used a gasoline-soaked rag to gag the boy, who then
suffocated
to death. The men then sexually desecrated Jeffrey’s corpse. Police
later
recovered Jeffrey’s concrete-encased body from a nearby river. Sicari
and
Jaynes are serving life prison terms for first and second-degree murder
respectively. Massachusetts has no death penalty.
The
Curley’s are reportedly baffled
at how their hometown of Cambridge would erect memorials to slain local
homosexuals and that Sen. Edward Kennedy would express shock at Matthew
Shepard’s 1998 murder, yet have nothing to say about their boy’s death
at the hands of homosexual pedophiles.
Jeffrey’s
parents successfully sued the convicted killers and were awarded $328
million in the spring of 2000. In July of the same year, their
attorney
Larry Frisoli announced a class-action
lawsuit against NAMBLA. The case is still in litigation. If successful,
parents could collect damages from NAMBLA if their members are
convicted
of child sexual abuse. Frisoli is also representing the Curleys in a separate
case, seeking $200 million in damages.
The
ACLU has agreed to undertake NAMBLA’s legal defense. “For us, it is a
fundamental
First Amendment case,” Massachusetts branch executive director John
Roberts
told the Boston Globe.
“It has to do with communications on a website, and material that does
not promote any kind of criminal behavior whatsoever.”
In
preliminary hearings, the Curley’s lawyer showed that Jaynes possessed
NAMBLA materials including photographs of boys and “eroticized
depictions
of young boys” that, according to official ACLU
statements, are “constitutionally protected speech.”
Explaining
NAMBLA’s position on adult-child sex, an essay on its website entitled
“Teaching
Sexuality”
acknowledges
“children are at our mercy.” It argues, however, that having adults not
teach them about sex would be an irresponsible abdication of
responsibility.
This would make “about as much sense to leave children's sexual
nourishment
to their peers as it would to assume that the mud pies they make for
each
other are an adequate lunch.”
NAMBLA
goes on to contend that such education must include
‘inter-generational’
sex to be effective: “If we accepted sexual behaviour between children
and adults, we would be far more able to protect our children from
abuse
and exploitation than we are now. They would be free to tell us, as
they
can about all kinds of other experiences, what is happening to them and
to have our sympathy and support instead of our mute and mistrustful
terror.”
In
court
briefs filing for dismissal, an ACLU attorney wrote, “examination
of
the materials that have been identified by the plaintiffs will show
that
they simply do not advocate violation of the law. But even if that were
the case, speech is not deprived of the protection of the First
Amendment
simply because it advocates an unlawful act.”
One
lawful act that the ACLU does not consistently condone – free
association
based upon a common value system -- has been practiced by the Boy
Scouts
of America since 1916. BSA has always excluded homosexuals and required
Christian values adherence. Thus atheists, Hindi, neopagans, Buddhists,
Unitarians (and homosexuals as well) are among those whom the BSA have
consistently excluded.
In the 2000 BSA
v. Dale case, the U.S. Supreme Court determined BSA’s “adult
leaders
inculcate its youth members with its value system.” The Justices ruled
that forcing BSA to accept homosexual leaders would “significantly
affect”
its ability to instill long-standing ideals. The Court noted that BSA
“asserts
that homosexual conduct is inconsistent” with its core values and
upheld
that the boys organization should not be forced to “promote homosexual
conduct as a legitimate form of behavior.”
The
Supreme Court further determined that state laws regarding public
accommodation
“run afoul the Scouts’ freedom of expressive association.” The state
“may
not interfere with speech for no better reason than promoting an
approved
message or discouraging a disfavored one, however enlightened either
purpose
may seem.”
Joining
the backlash that greeted this ruling, the ACLU has participated in numerous
cases throughout the country seeking to make it increasingly
difficult
for the Boy Scouts to operate locally. A secondary goal is to drain
BSA’s
resources via litigation. The ACLU is thus challenging BSA’s federal
charter,
tax-exempt status and is seeking to deny use of many local venues in
which
to hold Scouting activities.
The
ACLU is suing on behalf of a Methodist minister in Chicago, objecting
to
religious endorsement and a homosexual agnostic hoping to volunteer as
leader of a BSA-led youth program. In this case, the ACLU also objects
to the BSA’s requirement to recite the Scout
Oath, specifically because it includes pledges to God and
Country.
Jeffrey
Curley’s parents’ attorney has found witnesses who are prepared to
testify
that the adult-child sex advocacy group does more than promote
age-of-consent
law revocation.
Better
A Millstone Inc. described NAMBLA in an AP-reported court
affidavit as “a quasi school for training its members on how to
profile
children.” NAMBLA members exchange advice on how to gain children’s
confidence
well enough to lure them into sexual encounters while avoiding parents
and/or police.
A
policeman who infiltrated NAMBLA’s leadership revealed in another
affidavit
that a member offered to arrange a sexual encounter with a boy. ACLU
unsuccessfully
petitioned the court to have this and other similar testimony
disallowed
and to place Jeffrey Curley’s parents under gag order.
“Why
don't they just start their own homosexual scouting group?” asked
Traditional
Values Chairman Rev. Louis P. Sheldon in a recent
editorial, rather than try and force the BSA to conform to an
emerging
secular orthodoxy? Save our
Scouts
is currently leading a campaign to defend BSA and expose its enemies’
motives.
In a
Manchester Union Leader editorial,
Bernadette Malone Connolly asks: If the ACLU is willing to defend
NAMBLA’s
constitutionally protected freedom of speech and association, why is
the
vaunted civil rights legal defense organization attacking the Boy
Scouts
for asserting the same rights?
Apparently
the ACLU considers the BSA’s homosexual exclusion to be more
threatening
to boys in particular and society in general than NAMBLA’s child-adult
sex advocacy.
|