FrontPage magazine.com :: The ACLU's Leap to Inaction by Hillel Stavis

For nearly a hundred years the crèche sat in front of the Balch Elementary School in South Norwood, Massachusetts. Then in 2004, Sarah Wunsch, attorney for the Massachusetts branch of the American Civil Liberties Union contended that the display depicting the birth of Jesus in a Bethlehem manger, violated separation of church and state. and its presence on the grounds of a public school sent a message that the schools endorse Christianity. ''Kids being driven to school or being dropped off see it and think it's part of school," she said.

Eventually, the ACLU prevailed, the crèche was removed and relocated nearby to private land.

In scores of similar cases, the ACLU and its 50 state affiliates relentlessly scan the horizon for perceived violations of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. Supreme Court decisions on religious constitutional issues began in earnest in the late 1940’s, culminating in the landmark decision in the 1962 Engle v. Vitale decision in which the Court ruled that New York’s practice of beginning the school day with a prayer violated the first amendment. Recently, the ACLU has trumpeted its victories in “The Silver Ring Thing” case in which The Department of Health and Human Services was held in violation of the clause by providing “inherently religious activities” in its promotion of an “abstinence before marriage” program. Nor is the ACLU shy about broadcasting its role in eliminating “intelligent design” courses in Pennsylvania public schools. In hundreds of cases, the ACLU neither slumbers nor sleeps when it comes to pursuing miscreants who would subvert our Constitution. Thanks to their efforts, perhaps next year our currency will bear the inscription, “In Litigation We Trust.”

Now imagine my surprise when I couldn’t find anyone – either at the Massachusetts ACLU – or at its big brother in Washington who had brought legal action – or who would even render an opinion - on the construction of a $22,000,000 religious structure on land virtually given away by the city of Boston and attendant religious instruction courses forced on a nearby state-funded college. How could such a monumental religious undertaking involving the obvious endorsement by government officials at every level escape the withering gaze of the watchdogs of the ACLU?

It took only a few phone calls to find the answer. The religious structure and institution was neither a church nor a synagogue. It was a mosque. And not just another mosque. The Islamic Society of Boston’s mosque project will be the largest on the east coast of the United States and will be funded primarily through Middle East emirate money.

Not content with support pledged by Wahhabist Saudi Arabia, the ISB sought to purchase the city-owned land at a bargain basement price. And did they ever succeed. The City of Boston obliged the group by selling its 1.9 acre site valued at $2,000,000 for $175,000. Boldly compounding the fraudulent conveyance part of the scam, the city agreed to receive further in-kind payment from the ISB in the form of an Islamic Library and courses in Islamic instruction at a state facility, Roxbury Community College; not a $200 crèche or a menorah made of scrap tubing, but a multi-million dollar enterprise based on defrauding taxpayers and establishing ongoing indoctrination courses on the glories of Islam. Not only did this enterprise represent “inherent religious activity”, but it went far beyond the ACLU’s floor for triggering action by involving explicit and manifold religious activity.

If, as de Rochefoucault had it, “Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue”, the ACLU has to be first in line at that altar.