With the ACLU, 'American' Comes First

by: Steven Hart

Tue Feb 20, 2007 at 08:30:37 AM EST

Watch out, folks. The national gag reflex is about to be tested once again.

The ludicrous saga of David Paszkiewicz, the Preachin' Teacher of Kearny High School, is poised to enter the same right-wing fantasy realm where Iraq is a budding wonderland of freshly painted schools, Hillary Clinton is plotting to turn all Americans into lesbian abortionists, and Terri Schiavo would even now be water-skiing off the Florida Keys if she hadn't been murdered by euthanasia-crazed liberals.

Yesterday's announcement that the American Civil Liberties Union and the People For the American Way Foundation are gearing up to take legal action against the Kearny Board of Education is sure to send the Bill O'Reilly types into orbit.

Steven Hart :: With the ACLU, 'American' Comes First

The fact that the school board appears to have ducked its civic obligation to the students and citizens of Kearny will scarcely matter - not when there's another chance to denounce the ACLU. Every golden oldie in the American conservative jukebox is going to be played over and over. God is being banished from our schools! Our tax dollars are being wasted on frivolous lawsuits. Liberals are using the courts to brainwash our children into hell! Secular humanists gonna git your mama!

The problem here is that presented with incontrovertible evidence that a teacher was going way over the line by preaching Christianist nonsense in the classroom, the board went into full CYA mode and took several measures that effectively painted a red circle around Matthew LaClair, the teenager who blew the whistle on the Preachin' Teach. They're still doing it:

"It is unfortunate that public dollars will be spent in defending our school district when this matter is already being addressed through dialogue and action," ed board President Bernadette McDonald is quoted as saying in the statement.
The district, she said, has already retained Edwin H. Stier, a former director of the state Division of Criminal Justice, to conduct an independent investigation into student Matthew LaClair's "claims" that a Kearny High School history teacher/Baptist minister crossed the line between church and state in class.

There, you see? This whole thing could be dealt with nicely if only that kid would stop making waves. Well, let him go on making waves. The kid has guts. He's going to need them, too, because once the radio ranters and cable clowns go to work on this story, Matthew LaClair is going to have trouble recognizing himself or his cause in the distorted picture that will be broadcast around the country.

What he should always keep in mind is that he is standing up for American values. Real American values. Forget the bilge about God being chased out of schools and the public square. A secular country is a place where religious values of every stripe can flourish. These religious hysterics are determined to forget that the separation of church and state was a matter of utmost practicality, that it stopped a developing crisis in which some freshly minted states immediately started arresting and fining members of other Christian sects they didn't like. We don't need an America in which a religious wacko can tell a student in the middle of a class that she's going to hell.

That's why we need groups like the ACLU so desperately.

Every time some blowhard starts sounding off about the ACLU, ask him this: The ACLU works to uphold the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Which of those documents do you have a problem with? The ACLU represents the rights of the individual against abuses of power by the state and other authorities. Since when did that stop being a conservative cause?

The first word represented in the ACLU's acronym is "American," and a big part of what that word stands for is also what's at stake in this situation.

Cross posted at The Opinion Mill.