La. ACLU Head Compares People Who Believe in Higher Power to Terrorists
On Monday, the school board of Tangipahoa Parish in Louisiana had their meeting and was asked by the ACLU to remind teachers not to allow prayer at school functions. In an astounding aside, the First Amendment has become a restriction on private individuals on where and when they can express their religion. The statement was not school sponsored prayer but prayer at all, including presumably spontaneous prayer by students. How the Louisiana ACLU can reconcile the position that no one be allowed to pray in school with their belief in the right of free expression and freedom of religion is left to the reader.
On this occasion the head of the Louisiana ACLU, Joe Cook, had this to say about people who believe in religion (HT: Lone Star Times:
”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.”
No amount of parsing can take the meaning of this quote away. The head of the ACLU in Louisiana believes that if you believe in God you will eventually be led to fly planes into buildings, become a suicide bomber, or decapitate people on TV. You may believe that religion should be stricken in the public square even when the expresser is a private individual but the statement that people who believe in a higher power are on the road to terrorism should be offensive.
This was spoken by the head of the ACLU in Louisiana and therefore can be taken as an official position by that unit, if not the entire ACLU as a whole. If you are outraged by this, contact the Louisiana ACLU and the National ACLU to get them to repudiate such hateful and bigoted remarks.
ACLU of Louisiana
PO Box 56157
New Orleans, LA 70156-6157
(866) 522-0617
National ACLU Feedback Form here
Others talking about this: Mudville Gazette, Outside the Beltway, StoptheACLU
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