The following interview with Alan Sears, Presient of The Alliance Defense Fund is crossposted from Stop The ACLU
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First of all, I want to thank you on behalf of Stop The ACLU, all of our contributors, and supporters. It is an honor to have this interview with you. We appreciate the Alliance Defense Fund does for America by fighting the ACLU, and protecting life, and liberty.
1 Could you tell us a brief summary of how ADF came about?
Enough was enough. Dismayed by years of the erosion of liberty through activist courts in1993, thirty-five leaders of various Christian ministries came together to discuss the growing legal threats to religious freedom, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family and the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) was born. ADF’s purpose was to develop sufficient means to win – through training, strategy, coordination, and funding to support litigation. In just eleven short years, ADF has trained over 850 allied attorneys, 405 law students, and provided funding for over 1,500 cases, including twenty-six victories at the Unites States Supreme Court.
2. What inspired you to write your new book, The ACLU vs. America?
In December 2003, I appeared on the O’Reilly Factor to discuss the ACLU’s legal attacks on the public celebration of Christmas. During that interview, Bill O’Reilly asked, tongue in cheek: “Isn’t the ACLU an organization that started out with good beginnings, but has just gotten off track over the past decade?” There was no way to answer it in a 25-30 second sound bite. Craig Osten (my-co-author) and I pondered O’Reilly’s question and realized that most Americans believe this myth that the ACLU had good roots. We knew that the truth had to be told: that the ACLU had a completely different agenda for America right from the start, an agenda that sought to legally undermine every American institution in order to reshape our nation as the ACLU and its founders saw fit.
3. What would you say to those people who say that just because the ACLU was founded on Communism does not mean that they still have communist goals?
Baldwin fastidiously claimed he was not a communist, and in fact, purged the ACLU board members who actually belonged to the party when Stalin and Hitler linked arms in 1939. Despite this, Baldwin had repeatedly expressed admiration for the Soviets and had many communist and socialist allies. In an interview a few years before his death, ACLU Founder Roger Baldwin said to Peggy Lamson (a former ACLU board member): “The Communists say, we don’t care what the majority says, this minority is right, and if we can impose our will on the majority, we will do so.” This type of self-image sums up the modern-day ACLU, which has demonstrated, time and time again, blatant disregard for the will of the people and the democratic process. For example, the ACLU has filed or supported lawsuit after lawsuit to either block public votes on constitutional amendments affirming traditional marriage, or to overturn the results (which have yet to be in the ACLU’s favor). When Alaskan voters passed a constitutional amendment in 1998 affirming marriage as between one man and one woman, the ACLU’s former executive director said: “Today’s results prove that certain fundamental issues should not be left up to a majority vote.”
4. I have read in your book that the ACLU filed a brief in favor of legalizing child pornography. When I wrote about this, many people wanted solid proof. Where can one see in the record how the ACLU defended this?
There are several examples. The files at the U.S. Supreme Court are a good starting point. In 1983, the ACLU submitted a friend of the court brief in the case of New York v. Ferber, arguing that the distribution of child pornography is protected by the First Amendment. The ACLU Policy Guide states: “The ACLU believes that the First Amendment protects the dissemination of all forms of communication. The ACLU opposes on First Amendment grounds, laws that restrict the production and distribution of any printed and visual materials even when some of the producers of those materials are punishable under criminal law.” ( i.e. child pornography).
In the mid-1980s, when I serving as the Director of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography, the then-legislative counsel of the ACLU testified that it was the ACLU’s position that once child pornography was produced, there should be no government restriction on its sale and distribution.
5. Recently a judge in California ruled that the Mt. Soledad cross was unconstitutional despite the majority of San Diego voters supported keeping the cross. What are your thoughts on judicial activism in America today? Should judges be using international law in interpreting the Constitution?
In his biography by Peggy Lamson, Roger Baldwin said: “I placed my faith in the courts…” What he meant by that was that he knew the ACLU could not achieve its aims through state and federal legislatures or by taking their case to the people. He knew that the courts would be the most useful method of imposing the ACLU’s agenda on the people. The outgrowth of that strategy is the judicial activism we see today, where the ACLU and its allies are using the courts to deny the expressed will of the people and to impose new laws via judicial fiat. In the Mt. Soledad case, the ACLU attorney James McElroy expressed his disdain for the majority when he said after the vote: “It still doesn’t mean a damn thing. Voters should have never voted on it.”
ADF believes that judges should interpret the Constitution as written and consistent with its original meaning. It is not an “evolving document” with emanations from penumbras as judicial activists’ state.
As far as international law, this is just another example of how the ACLU has tried to change the rules to get their way. They came to the realization that the Constitution can only be stretched in so many ways, that they are eventually going to reach a limit with how far they can advance their agenda with domestic laws and courts alone!
I think Chief Justice John Roberts said it quite eloquently during his confirmation hearing when asked about international law. He said: “Looking at foreign law for support is like looking out over a crowd and picking out your friends. Foreign law, you can find anything you want. If you don’t find it in the decisions of France or Italy, it’s in the decisions of Somalia or Japan or Indonesia or wherever.” He went on to state that international law was a misuse of legal precedent and we would wholeheartedly agree.
Nevertheless, the ACLU, along with its former counsel Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, have been the biggest proponents of using international law as precedent to undermine our national sovereignty, which millions have sacrificed and died to defend and preserve.
6. What do you find is the biggest threat to liberty in our society today? How can we counter this?
The biggest threat to liberty today is the agenda of advocates of homosexual behavior, which Craig Osten and I detail in our previous book, The Homosexual Agenda: The Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today. The ACLU has helped develop much of this agenda and has worked very closely with these advocates. The ultimate goal of many homosexual activists is to progressively silence and punish any dissenting viewpoints when it comes to homosexual behavior. In places such as Sweden and Canada, people with sincere religious objections to homosexual behavior are facing fines, loss of employment, and even imprisonment for expressing their views.
How can we counter this? First of all, we can show up. When ADF and its allies have shown up against legal advocates of homosexual behavior in the courtroom, with the training, strategy, and coordination to win, we’ve been successful in defeating the agenda of homosexual advocates, including same-sex “marriage.”
Secondly, it will take resources. The ACLU and its allies, including radical advocates of homosexual behavior, have tremendous financial resources at their disposal. The ACLU Foundation has $175 million in assets. The Gill Foundation, whose mission is to push the homosexual agenda, has spent millions of dollars to achieve its aims. The Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal and Defense and Education Fund, and Planned Parenthood, all have massive amounts of funds, including millions from corporate America, to spend.
Thirdly, Americans need to become educated on the threats to liberty, and that is why we wrote the ACLU book, as well as our previous book on the homosexual agenda, to awaken the majority of Americans who still respect the values of life, liberty, and family that made our nation great.
7. Is it possible to reform the ACLU? Can they be changed, or is countering them the only option?
It’s not a public company and is controlled by a private board. It’s tough to “reform” an organization that had a very different agenda for America right from the beginning. In addition, they have had eighty years to build the legal precedents that they have used to advance their agenda, and even if the ACLU went out of existence today, those precedents would still be in place. Therefore, it is going to take a long-term, strategic effort to reverse those legal precedents, and put new ones in place that affirm religious freedom, the sanctity of life, marriage and the family.
8. What is your strategy in fighting the ACLU? Are there other ways people can get involved?
ADF has a four-fold plan to fight and eventually defeat the ACLU. That plan is training, coordination, funding, and direct litigation. Our goals include training at least 5,000 allied attorneys over the next ten years to take on the ACLU and its allies and building an in-house attorney mentoring program – to train and equip the next generation of attorneys. But you train all the attorneys you want, and if they do not have a coordinated plan of action, it is not going to make much of a difference. That is why ADF focuses on strategic coordination to make sure that we are working in unity towards a common goal of reversing the legal damage inflicted by the ACLU and its allies on our nation, rather than working against each other. Thirdly, we make sure that when our allied attorneys show up in court to take on the ACLU, that they have the necessary financial resources to win. ADF has funded over 1,500 grants for legal cases and projects in just eleven years. Finally, ADF wants to grow litigators, lawyers on our staff who are actively involved in defending religious freedom, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.
9. Currently there is legislation in the House by Congressman Hostetler that is asking to reform the attorney’s fees act in the Civil Rights Act to not apply in Establishment Clause cases. Does ADF support this?
We talk about the need to reform this in our book, as it has become a financial cash cow for the ACLU and one of their weapons in their campaign of fear, intimidation, and disinformation to force public officials to bow to their agenda. While ADF does not delve into legislative issues, we hope this effort by the congressman passes to fix this loophole which the ACLU has exploited for years to bully towns and municipalities into compliance.
10. Do you support grassroots efforts like Stop The ACLU.Com and Stop The ACLU.Org in informing the people of the ACLU’s actions and other civil liberties groups? How can we motivate others to get involved? What would your advice be in helping our organization’s success?
ADF is thankful for any efforts that raise awareness of the ACLU’s dangerous agenda for America and encourages citizens to get involved in combating it. I believe that the American people are increasingly rejecting the ACLU’s agenda as more and more of it is brought into the light. Keep on doing what you are doing, highlighting the ACLU’s most recent outrageous statements and positions, and I am sure your efforts will be successful.
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