Civil Liberties Class - Entry 4

Religion

An eight-year-old boy sings in the school chorus. The public school chorus has been preparing for their annual show by repeating their songs and practicing every word and note. The chorus director has carefully selected the songs – several of them religious in nature.

Does the boy have the tools necessary to suggest that religious songs may be inappropriate or that the words he is being asked to sing do not fit with the things he learns in his home or place of worship? When the show takes place, the boy’s parent are upset (although not surprised) that the chorus director has included several religious songs in the show. They know that if they complain, their son will be embarrassed, the chorus director will say, “these are standards that have been sung by school kids for years,” and other parents will ridicule them for being “intolerant” and/or “making a big deal out of nothing.

Why was this situation created in the first place? Has the chorus director overstepped her bounds? Did she feel like she was responsible for considering the various beliefs of her students and her families? Should a school official have reviewed and approved the selections early in the process – remember that royalties had to be paid so this decision went through some type of administrative process before the first day of practice.

Will you notice these things in the future? If you try, you will see that Christianity is apparent at nearly every school event you attend with your children. If you begin to notice these things, you might be a civil libertarian.

Internet Privacy

You are completing your dissertation and hope to soon have a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice. As is often the case in criminal justice, you have chosen a controversial topic for your dissertation. Your theory is that pornographic web sites serve as a replacement for voyeuristic behavior. In effect, “Peeping Toms” engage in their behavior without leaving their homes. In your effort to collect data to test your theory you visit many pornographic web sites and participate in chat rooms visited by consumers of online pornography.

One afternoon, upon returning home from your daughter’s soccer game (you are a normal person - an “us”), you are placed under arrest for child pornography. Investigators collected evidence of your deeds through two different sources. First, they had been collecting data about your internet use over the last three months by using a hidden program, which is commercially available, to record every key stroke. Second, they received a tip from a repairperson at the computer store where you recently had work done on your system.

Since you are a normal person with plans for a respectable future, you are shocked to be arrested. Other citizens in your community are also shocked, although some express relief that another “threat to their children has been removed from the streets.” You wonder about the legality of a program that secretly records everything you do on your computer. You also wonder whether it was appropriate for the repairperson to turn you in to the police and whether the contents of your hard drive were copied and turned over to the police.

Although you are bothered by all the events, you are now in big trouble and you need to begin thinking about whether any of this evidence is admissible in court. You say to yourself “I’m as bad as those damn lawyers!” Then, thinking more clearly, you say, “I must be a civil libertarian.”

Conclusion

These stories may seem a little contrived. Although partly fictional, the civil liberties issues raised in each story are true and are based on real cases or events. I hope that as a result of this class each of you is able to begin seeing things in a different way. Is your response to these stories the same as it would have been six weeks ago?

You don’t need to like the idea of setting a “guilty” person free, but you know that this happens less often than the opposite situation, in which an innocent person is sent to prison. You believe that guilt can, and should, be established through a professional process that respects the rights of all parties.

You may not always like the results, but you know that procedures that guide lawmakers of all kinds are based on guiding principles that are intended to protect citizens from over zealous government entities. These processes may be cumbersome, and sometimes don’t work as planned, but these processes are essential.

You don’t need to start hating George Bush, but you could consider the possibility that our faith in “process,” “fairness,” and “blind justice” was seriously challenged by the events that put him in office. Why have we been forced to ignore the “gray areas” and take sides?

Can you agree that terrorism must be stopped while expressing concerns about government intrusion in our lives - or does this sort of thinking mean you are a terrorist? What pressures do you feel when you stray from “acceptable” thoughts about government, war, terrorism, the drug war, the death penalty, and other important issues?

Are policies and legal decisions motivated by “politics” or are these decisions based on an effort to achieve “justice?” What is your definition of “justice?” Can you define justice without relying on ideology or political beliefs?

Do you believe that it is ridiculous to attach political labels to a subject that is so important to our nation and to each of us as individuals? Unfortunately, it may be argued that labels have already been attached. We know that true libertarians are often quite conservative. But aren’t civil libertarians typically defined as liberal? And aren’t liberals also referred to as left-wing, socialist, communist, or worse? How did something as important as civil liberties get defined in these terms? It may be more important to ask why. How (and why) has “civil liberties” been defined as a bad thing? Who gains from this definition?

Finally, thank you for participating in this class and for thinking big thoughts about civil liberties. I hope you enjoyed the class. – Dr. Mentor