The inauguration of Ronald Reagan as president in 1981, ushered in an eight-year period of conservative leadership in the U.S. government. Under his leadership, the government pushed a conservative social agenda, including outlawing abortion, inserting prayer in schools, banning pornography, and resisting gay rights. Fifty years after the Scopes trial, the ACLU found itself fighting another classroom case, the Arkansas 1981 creationism statute, which required schools to teach the biblical account of creation as a scientific alternative to evolution. The ACLU won the case in the McLean v. Arkansas decision. In 1982, the ACLU became involved in a case involving the distribution of child pornography (New York v. Ferber). In an amicus brief, the ACLU argued that child pornography that violates the three prong obscenity test should be outlawed, but that the law in question was overly restrictive because it outlawed artistic displays and otherwise non-obscene material. The court did not adopt the ACLU's position.[272] During the 1988 presidential election, Vice President George H. W. Bush noted that his opponent Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis had described himself as a "card-carrying member of the ACLU" and used that as evidence that Dukakis was "a strong, passionate liberal" and "out of the mainstream".[273] The phrase subsequently was used by the organization in an advertising campaign.[274] In 1990 the ACLU defended Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North,[275] whose conviction was tainted by coerced testimony -- a violation of his fifth amendment rights -- during the Iran--Contra affair, where Oliver North was involved in illegal weapons sales to Iran in order to illegally fund the Contra guerillas. In 1997, ruling unanimously in the case of Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, the Supreme Court voted down anti-indecency provisions of the Communications Decency Act (the CDA), finding they violated the freedom of speech provisions of the First Amendment. In their decision, the Supreme Court held that the CDA's "use of the undefined terms 'indecent' and 'patently offensive' will provoke uncertainty among speakers about how the two standards relate to each other and just what they mean." The ACLU's position on spam is considered controversial by a broad cross-section of political points of view. In 2000, Marvin Johnson, a legislative counsel for the ACLU, stated that proposed anti-spam legislation infringed on free speech by denying anonymity and by forcing spam to be labeled as such, "Standardized labeling is compelled speech." He also stated, "It's relatively simple to click and delete."[279] The debate found the ACLU joining with the Direct Marketing Association and the Center for Democracy and Technology in criticizing a bipartisan bill in the House of Representatives in 2000. As early as 1997 the ACLU had taken a strong position that nearly all spam legislation was improper, although it has supported "opt-out" requirements in some cases. The ACLU opposed the 2003 CAN-SPAM act[280] suggesting that it could have a chilling effect on speech in cyberspace. In November 2000, 15 African-American residents of Hearne, Texas, were indicted on drug charges after being arrested in a series of "drug sweeps". The ACLU filed a class action lawsuit, Kelly v. Paschall, on their behalf, alleging that the arrests were unlawful. The ACLU contended that 15 percent of Hearne's male African American population aged 18 to 34 were arrested based on the "uncorroborated word of a single unreliable confidential informant coerced by police to make cases." On May 11, 2005, the ACLU and Robertson County announced a confidential settlement of the lawsuit, an outcome which "both sides stated that they were satisfied with." The District Attorney dismissed the charges against the plaintiffs of the suit.[281] The 2009 film American Violet depicts this case.[282] In the 2000, the ACLU's Massachusetts affiliate represented the North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), on first amendment grounds, in the Curley v. NAMBLA wrongful death civil suit that was based solely on the fact that a man who raped and murdered a child had visited the NAMBLA website.[275] Also In 2000, the ACLU lost the Boy Scouts of America v. Dale case, which had asked the Supreme Court to require the Boy Scouts of America to drop their policy of prohibiting homosexuals from becoming Boy Scout leaders. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACLU Image By Wudumindif [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

• published: 29 Nov 2013
• views: 246