Pray tell why godless ACLU meddles with protecting religious freedoms

Listen to the pit bulls of talk radio for a while, and you'll hear the ACLU mentioned.

The lawyers of the American Civil Liberties Union are almost without exception described as a bunch of infidels out to ruin all that's right with this God-fearing nation. They have the audacity to defend the constitutional rights of the undeserving: freaks and agitators and protesters and the kind of people who give normal folks the shivers.

That's the ACLU, a four-letter word to real Americans stirred to action by talk radio and right-wing punditry. That's all good for ratings and for fomenting fear, of course, but there's something wrong with that message.

It omits a few pertinent facts. These days, I suspect the ACLU of Nevada is on a mission to preserve the rights of religious believers of every cloth. Yes, that ACLU, the one that causes some of you to spit every time its name is mentioned.

There's the case of 10-year Metro detective Steve Riback, an observant Orthodox Jew who sought to wear a beard and yarmulke skullcap in keeping with religious tradition. The ACLU sued the department on Riback's behalf, arguing its policies violated his First Amendment right of religious expression. Riback, assigned to the department's quality assurance desk, won a partial victory when U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt's court determined Metro's policy violated the detective's rights in his current duty.

The legal battle figures to continue as Riback attempts to move from behind the desk and back into the field. The judge's decision only covers the desk job.

"What is not unique about Steve's case is the fact the ACLU of Nevada has stepped forward to defend his religious liberties," ACLU attorney Gary Peck says.

Remember when city of Las Vegas officials tried to prevent a few homeless advocates from feeding the down and out in public parks? Largely lost in the ACLU's representation is the fact those homeless advocates were acting on their religious beliefs in a public place.

Then there are the Strip's sign-toting street preachers, Jim Webber and Tom Griner, whose stated love of Jesus resulted in arrests for obstructing the sidewalk with placards reading "Don't Gamble With Your Soul." The ACLU successfully defended them as well on religious and free-speech grounds.

"People have the right to be out on the sidewalk saying what they have to say regardless of what the content is," ACLU general counsel Allen Lichtenstein says.

That's true even when the message is written on a T-shirt, as in the case of the student who was expelled for wearing Mormon messages to school. The ACLU stood by her side.

Its lawyers also defended 17-year-old Muslim student Jana Elhifny against the Washoe County School District after she claimed unchecked student harassment forced her to quit school. Elhifny said she was ridiculed, spat on and even received death threats after wearing a religious head scarf called a hijab to North Valley High School.

There are the religious pamphleteers who sought to pass out their material outside school grounds. The ACLU assisted them, too. Its lawyers are currently representing Nation of Islam members who were also rebuffed when they attempted to hand out their religious materials in a public forum.

And the ACLU took on UNLV and UNR officials whose sense of free expression didn't extend to freelance preachers on campus.

Those godless old ACLU lawyers even defended the rights of the virulently anti-homosexual the Rev. Fred Phelps of Topeka, Kan., when representatives of his Westboro Baptist Church came to Las Vegas to protest a high school production of "The Laramie Project," a play about gay-violence victim Matthew Shepard.

Obviously, the right-wing radio pit bulls are wrong: From the sound of things, those ACLU lawyers are a bunch of religious zealots.

Constitutional zealots is more like it, Lichtenstein says.

"The real issue isn't religion versus nonreligion," he says. "It's government involvement versus government uninvolvement. We are not antagonistic toward religion. And we are not antagonistic toward religion in the public square."

Peck adds, "I think the biggest misconception is that we are somehow anti-religion generally or anti-Christian. We are not."

Not that you'll hear that side of the story on talk radio.

For a bunch of godless infidels, those ACLU lawyers sure do a lot of missionary work.

John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0295.