The American Center for Law and Justice

Pat Robertson's answer to the ACLU is the ACLJ - the "American Center for Law and Justice" (which he founded in 1990). As usual, the name is misleading, because "law and justice" is the very last thing that the ACLJ is interested in. While the ACLU defends the civil rights of all Americans, the ACLJ defends only what it considers the rights of "believers" - believers in fundamentalist christianity, of course. Usually, these "rights" involve forcing the reactionary "family values" agenda on the rest of us - under the guise of freedom of religion and freedom of speech, of course. It is through this backdoor that the Religious Right hope to reintroduce prayer in public schools, as usually ignoring the fact that freedom of religion entails freedom from religion. As soon as there is "voluntary" prayer in public schools, peer pressure, especially in conservative areas, does the rest.

"A panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 3-0 Tuesday to uphold a judge's 1999 ruling striking the law down. The state had asked the appeals court to reinstate the law. A 1976 Louisiana law initially allowed for silent meditation. It was amended in 1992 to include the word "prayer" and again in 1999 to remove the word "silent." The mother of a ninth-grader sued the Ouachita Parish School Board because students had made fun of her son and another boy who did not participate in prayer, calling them "atheist" and "devil worshipper." from a 12/12/2001 Associated Press article on the Louisiana school prayer law

To my knowledge, the ACLJ has not yet come to the defense of students of minority faiths who were bullied and attacked by their peers as satanists because they refused to participate in "voluntary" school prayer. One can only take that as evidence that such behavior is in line with the ACLJ's vision of "religious and civil liberties".

"Imposing prayer-by-majority-vote is flagrant and insensitive abuse of school authority. Such schools should be teaching students about the purpose of the Bill of Rights, instead of teaching them to be religious bullies. Some principals or school boards have even made seniors hold open class votes on whether to pray at graduation, leading to hostility and reprisal against those students brave enough to stand up for the First Amendment."source

The ACLJ is headed by Jay Sekulov, who holds the title of ACLJ Chief Legal Counsel. Sekulow has his own radio show, called Jay Sekulow Live and has written several books elaborating the standard Religious Right claim that Christians are being "intimidated", "silenced", even "persecuted" in today's USA. Supposedly, the US government and the courts are not just neutral towards religion, but "hostile". Brian Elroy McKinley gives a marvelous response to this absurd persecution claim on his website:

"(..) This is not the persecution mentioned in the Bible. The leaders of the Christian Coalition are not being hung on crosses (Philippians 2:8). The leaders of the Family Research Council are not being stoned to death (Acts 7:59). The leaders of Focus on the Family are not being thrown to the lions (Daniel 6:16). And yet these people have the gall to claim they are being persecuted in God's name. They are not. All they have to worry about is someone calling them bad names and denying them their request for favoritism. "

It has been my observation that the ACLJ doesn't like to report or document lost court cases on its website. Try finding a single press release on the ACLJ website that admits defeat - good luck. For a more objective, up-to-date look at what the ACLJ is up to, I recommend the Internet Infidel's News Wire's Eye on the Right.