Legion fights ACLU

In a clash of patriotic titans, the American Legion has launched a frontal assault on the American Civil Liberties Union, seeking to cut the ACLU off at the pocketbook by changing the Civil Rights Act.

The Legion campaign is led by a former ACLU lawyer, who now calls his former group "the Taliban of liberal secularism in America.'

Rees Lloyd, former commander of the San Gorgonio Pass American Legion Post 428 in Banning, was outraged when the ACLU won a lawsuit to remove a cross honoring the veterans of World War I at the Mojave Desert Veterans Memorial and was awarded attorneys' fees.

Citing the Legion motto, for God and Country, a resolution calling on Congress to amend the Civil Rights Act was adopted unanimously by the Legion's California department at its statewide convention last month in Redding.

The resolution urges that judges be barred from awarding attorneys' fees to the ACLU in cases brought to remove or destroy crosses or other religious symbols.

Whether the resolution will have the support of the 2.7 million-member American Legion nationwide will have to wait until later this summer at the Legion's national convention in Nashville, Tenn.

Defiant ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner said, "I think this is an anti-Constitution resolution, and it won't prevent us from doing our jobs, which is supporting and defending the Bill of Rights.'
Wizner said that other religious symbols were not welcome at the Mojave site. He said an application to erect a Buddhist monument there was rejected by the National Park Service.
"The Constitution does not prohibit any religious imagery on government property, but the government has to be neutral,' Wizner said.

Lloyd said the law was meant to protect poor and minority civil-rights victims who don't have the resources to defend themselves.

"Our belief is this rather noble intent has been corrupted by the ACLU, which has turned it into a vehicle for profit making it an effort to destroy Christian crosses,' Lloyd said.

If delegates at the Legion's Nashville convention adopt the resolution, it will become part of its national policy for next year and one of the issues the group pursues on Capitol Hill, said Joe March, a Legion spokesman at its headquarters in Indianapolis.

The resolution comes after decisions to remove crosses from the seals of Redlands and Los Angeles County, and the cross in Mojave, all brought about by the ACLU.

Though Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, pushed to save the Mojave cross, he has not taken an official stance on the Legion's resolution, said Jim Specht, his spokesman.

"(Lewis) certainly is very grateful that the Legion has provided support on the issue of the Mojave cross,' Specht said.

In the case of the Mojave cross, attorney fees could have been reduced or avoided completely, Wizner said.

"Every single time we obtain a favorable ruling in that case, the government changed tactics,' Wizner said. "There would have been no fees at all had they agreed to remove the cross without fighting its removal in court.'

Lloyd said the ACLU received $50,000 in the case of the Mojave cross.

Though the cross was erected in 1934 by the Death Valley Veterans of Foreign Wars as a tribute to World War I veterans, it has only been a controversial subject in recent years.

In response to a complaint from a resident, the ACLU sent a letter in January 2000 requesting the National Park Service remove the 6-foot cross.

When the cross was not removed, the ACLU filed a lawsuit in 2002 and a U.S. District Court judge in Riverside ruled in favor of the ACLU, saying the cross is a government endorsement of religion.

"Our position in the resolution is that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights clearly provides for the display of ... everybody's religious symbols,' said Bill Mayer, the state adjutant for the California American Legion.

Wizner said the criticism of the ACLU is wrong.

"I think the American Legion is trying to paint the ACLU's position as extreme,' he said. "In constitutional law it's mainstream, and the proof of that is the judges who agree with us.'