The ACLU and Religious Liberty

During the holiday season, we at the ACLU are accustomed to seeing editorial cartoons poking fun at us. We enjoy them. We know that parody is the cartoonist's prerogative. But many people genuinely misunderstand the ACLU's work on behalf of religious freedom, and the profound importance of the First Amendment principles we enforce. The holiday season, when many people think about the meaning of faith in their lives, is a good time to appreciate the Constitution's vision of religious liberty that has allowed both religion and democracy to flourish in America.

The First Amendment protects religious liberty through two principles: each individual may worship freely, and the government must stay out of religion. The ACLU works hard to make both principles meaningful in contemporary California life.

In public schools, we support students' individual right to practice their religion--to pray quietly, or to discuss religion informally. We have intervened on behalf of students prohibited from wearing crosses and "Real Women Love Jesus" T-shirts to class. We filed a federal court lawsuit on behalf of devout Sikh students suspended from elementary school for wearing sacred symbols, small ceremonial knives, or kirpans. The children are now happily back at school, and the school district has agreed to accommodate school safety and religious freedom.

What we oppose in public schools is state coercion to conform to religion. The government should not use compulsory public education to force the majority's faith on school children. Daily classroom prayers, coach-led team prayer before the football game, religious invocations at graduation, endless rehearsals for Christmas programs consisting only of hymns--all of these are blatant or subtle ways to use our tax-supported public schools to proselytize. And to divide children along religious lines and to hurt children of minority faith.

This does not mean that our public schools are religion-free zones. Schools may teach about religion--the history of religion, or comparative religions, for example--as long as they do not indoctrinate theological tenets. History, art, literature, philosophy: education would be incomplete without studying the powerful influence of religion in our past, present and artistic lives.

We explain this to people who call the ACLU to complain that a school curriculum includes novels with religious imagery or textbooks which recount the role of churches in America's major social protest movements. We also explain it to educators. The ACLU joined a coalition of religious and civil rights groups to draft guidelines for public schools, so that they would neither violate religious rights nor sanitize the schools of all mention of religion. The Clinton administration and the Department of Education have endorsed those guidelines.

Outside of schools, we support individuals' religious expression and oppose government's religious endorsement. People may place temporary religious symbols in public spaces that are available for all unattended symbols. When the Ohio government refused permission to place a cross on a public lawn, the ACLU brought the case to the Supreme Court that established the principle that private religious expression is protected from discrimination in public forums.

In San Francisco, we have never opposed Chabad's right to place a menorah in Union Square, because the City allows any private group to place a large structure in that park for several weeks. It is a public forum for all temporary displays: an exhibit of children's art, a mock shelter to protest the removal of homeless people from parks, a historical exhibit on the Hollywood Ten and the House Un-American Activities Committee -- or a religious symbol.

But the state may not show preferential treatment to a religion. That's why the United States Supreme Court allowed a federal appeals court ruling to stand, holding that San Francisco could not use tax funds to erect, display and maintain an enormous permanent cross in Mt. Davidson park. The ACLU, together with the American Jewish Congress and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, brought the case on behalf of Unitarian, Baptist, Jewish and Buddhist religious leaders. The City's cross made the park seem like an open-air church, and made the City's many religious minorities feel diminished and unwelcome. Every child and adult has a right to enjoy the city's parks. The case has now been peacefully resolved, with San Francisco voters approving a sale of the top of Mount Davidson and its cross to the Council of Armenian American Organizations of Northern California. This places a sacred symbol where it belongs: in private hands.

The ACLU will continue to fight for the right of each person to follow the dictates of her conscience in matters of religious belief. We know that Americans are a deeply religious people--with an extraordinary variety of faiths--precisely because the First Amendment keeps the heavy hand of government out of the delicate and sacred realm of faith. In America, unlike the many countries abroad scarred by bloody religious wars, a pluralistic and devout people have managed to live in tolerance and peace for more than 200 years. This is the legacy of our Constitution's commitment to religious freedom. We are fortunate to have inherited this legacy. The ACLU strives to preserve it for our children.

Margaret Crosby is a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union and is one of the litigators who successfully challenged the City's ownership of the Mt. Davidson cross.