One of the fastest growing Christian right legal groups is the Liberty Counsel, run by Matt Staver. This is Jerry Falwell's personal favorite and they've been in the spotlight a lot lately, gaining on the American Center for Law and Justice, the Alliance Defense Fund and the Thomas More Law Center in name recognition as a result. Predictably, the invocation of liberty in their title turns out to be little more than a punchline. They're now threatening a lawsuit against a blogger for designing a parody of a billboard put out by an "ex-gay" ministry. Here's the parody:

And here's the response:

The billboard, sponsored by the "ex-gay'' ministry Exodus International in Florida, read, "Gay? Unhappy? www.exodus.to.'' Watts, 26, a web developer for O'Reilly Media in Sebastopol, felt compelled to respond when he saw the billboard on a Web site in September.

"It was pretty immediate. It took about 15 or 20 minutes. I felt it was pretty offensive, unfair and mean spirited. I wanted to respond in a productive way,'' Watt said.

His response was an altered version of the billboard that he posted on his blog. It read, "Straight? Unhappy? www.gay.com.''

Now, to a sane person this sounds like the sort of parody that is absolutely protected by the first amendment. In fact, given their connection to Falwell, they certainly ought to know that the Supreme Court ruled, in a case involving him, that if something is done as a parody it is protected by the first amendment no matter how heinous or offensive the content might be. To "Liberty" Counsel, however, it's an opportunity to sue to stifle the free speech of this blogger.

The ACLU stepped in and sent a letter in response to Liberty Counsel's cease and desist letter and the group appears to have backed off. They're now claiming that since he removed the Exodus International logo, they're fine with it, but if you look at the original cease and desist letter you'll see that this was only one, and in fact the last, of their claimed legal rataionales for why he had to take it down. The reality is that they threatened a silly lawsuit and backed off when he didn't crumble and got the ACLU involved.