Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
That damned anti-Christian communist lawyer's group the ACLU is defending prisoners whose letters are being censored of Bible verses.
In a letter sent today to the jail's superintendent, Joseph Riggs, Jr., the ACLU asks for jail officials to guarantee in writing that the jail will no longer censor biblical passages from letters written to detainees and to revise the jail's written inmate mail policy to state that letters will not be censored simply because they contain religious material."It is nothing short of stunning that a jail would think it okay to censor the Bible and other religious material for no reason other than its religious nature," said David Shapiro, staff attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project. "Such censorship violates both the rights of detainees to practice religion freely and the free speech rights of those wanting to communicate with detainees."
And their communist, anti-religious fervor is just getting started:
The letter was prompted by a complaint brought to the ACLU by Anna Williams, a devout Christian whose son was detained at Rappahannock beginning in June of 2008 until his transfer earlier this year. Williams wanted to send her son religious material, including passages from the Bible, to support him spiritually during his confinement. But rather than deliver Williams' letters to her son in full, jail officials removed any and all religious material, destroying the religious messages Williams sought to convey to her son. For example, after jail officials excised biblical passages, a three-page letter sent by Williams to her son was reduced to nothing more than the salutation, the first paragraph of the letter and the closing, "Love, Mom."Jail officials banned additional material from other letters Williams attempted to send her son, including passages from the Book of Proverbs, the Book of James, the Book of Matthew and an article that contained Christian perspectives on confronting isolation while in jail. Jail officials have variously cited prohibitions on "Internet pages" and "religious material sent from home" as reasons for the censorship.
"It is essential that jail officials abide by the law and the requirements of the U.S. Constitution," said Daniel Mach, Director of Litigation for the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. "People do not lose their right to religious worship simply because they are incarcerated."
And just to prove their commie leanings, they cited the example of Soviet gulags in their letter to the prison officials:
"Even the novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky had ready access to scripture while incarcerated in a Siberian prison camp in tsarist Russia."
Bloody communists.
Politics
Comments
Posted by: Herod the Freemason | July 13, 2009 9:48 AM
So the tsarists were Soviets as well?
Shhh. Don't tell anyone. It might get out...
Posted by: Geds | July 13, 2009 10:06 AM
@Herod
Just goes to show, you can't trust these commies.
Posted by: Philbert | July 13, 2009 10:09 AM
Boy, this will make FoF and the rest of the fundielexics' heads spin like tops. The ACommieLU is fighting on their behalf--Oh, Noooooooes!! Of course they will see through this ruse to the ACLU's real objective, getting the prisons and Gitmo (which is more of a "Coercive Interrogation Theme Park) to allow those filty Allahmists to put Koranic verse--which everyone knows is ter'ist code for how to blow shit up--in THEIR letters.
Posted by: democommie | July 13, 2009 10:13 AM
I've got a friend who delights in cases like these, just so he can throw them in the face of right-wingers who demonize the ACLU. I'll be sure to forward it on.
Posted by: Ranson | July 13, 2009 10:21 AM
Of course the fundies, in their continuing effort to be impartial, will link to this report on all of their websites.
Posted by: Jeff Eyges | July 13, 2009 10:23 AM
The somewhat-conservative Christian Post has already reported this, without a great deal of head-spinning; in fact, they seem to approve.
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20090710/aclu-demands-end-to-jail-s-anti-religion-censorship/index.html
Posted by: anon | July 13, 2009 10:24 AM
My guess is that the policy has nothing to do with religion but is about preventing coded communications. Messages can be sent based on the bible references, pick a passage that matches the police code or gang code for homicide, for example, and that can be an order to kill another prisoner. I don't see why prison officials didn't cop to it. Watch some of the prison shows like Lock-up and see how prisoners and gangs come up with really complex coded systems. I guess if you have nothing else to do for 24 hours a day you can get really inventive.
Posted by: Liz | July 13, 2009 10:51 AM
It doesn't matter what the ACLU does, they will never be regarded as anything but evil liberals by the wingnuts. Here's a representative sample of their reaction to this news:
Posted by: tacitus | July 13, 2009 11:04 AM
I won't entirely go out on a limb and say this is why they are censoring, but I offer this information for your consideration.
Religion in Jail is sometimes used as a cover for gang activity. Jails will censor a variety of publications, because experience has taught them, that the use of Bible or holy scriptural passages, runic or other occult symbols, can and have been used as codes to give people in prison, instructions from outside criminal sources, or for internal orders between inmates who are part of the same gangs.
Prison officials are inbetween the Bill of Rights and ensuring their own safety and the safety of other inmates.
I would like to know the elements of this case. What do those Bible Passages state? And to what ends are they supporting the spiritual life of this inmate? Are they for authentic spiritual edification, or are these passages promoting racism, or other criminal acts or ideologies?
The irony of the ACLU covering this case under the circumstances however, is not lost on me.
Posted by: Seeing Eye Chick | July 13, 2009 11:42 AM
Re: #8
You could use that justification to censor any message. That doesn't explain 1. why they censored the religious passages, or 2. how their censorship is Constitutionally justified in the first place.Posted by: Flavin | July 13, 2009 11:47 AM
Jesusthe ACLU.Posted by: James Hanley | July 13, 2009 11:47 AM
From a post entitled The Schizophrenic ACLU
After all of the ink that has been spilled on this subject, some of them still don't have a clue.
Posted by: Dr X | July 13, 2009 11:50 AM
Could it be - the Constitution!
Posted by: Taz | July 13, 2009 12:09 PM
"For example, after jail officials excised biblical passages, a three-page letter sent by Williams to her son was reduced to nothing more than the salutation, the first paragraph of the letter and the closing, "Love, Mom.""
Three pages of religious quotes? Thanks, Ma!
Cutting that out seems like a valuable service. If I were that prisoner, I'd ask them to do it.
Posted by: Jon H | July 13, 2009 12:11 PM
I know one ACLU-hater who would say (as he has before) this is merely a ruse by the ACLU to hide their real agenda.
Posted by: mark | July 13, 2009 12:27 PM
Laying the groundwork for hollowed-out Korans.
Very close; one of the commenters left the following:
I am shocked, sense when has the ACLU sided with religion unless it supported Islam or any other religion accept Christianity. There must be a catch behind this.
Oh! it's because if religion was censored then the Koran would not be able to penetrate our prisons.
This same genius posted numerous times, claiming that evolution is "false science", America was founded on Christian principals, and, of course, s/he trotted out Pascal's Wager. A one-stop shop of fundie ignorance.
Posted by: Jeff Eyges | July 13, 2009 12:51 PM
...Oh, I forgot to mention, the vast majority of the ACLU's cases that are wholly unrelated to religion are also a smokescreen. They're very clever.
Posted by: Flavin | July 13, 2009 12:52 PM
Well, this will be another case the right-wingnut Christians will ignore when they claim the ACLU is anti-religion.
Posted by: Mobius | July 13, 2009 1:03 PM
Re 8, 10,
"My guess is that the policy has nothing to do with religion but is about preventing coded communications."
Tough shit. If you're going to let prisoners communicate at all (and we generally agree that keeping them in total isolation for years is cruel), they can encode messages. They could use two different styles of handwriting for each letter, and encode binary messages. They could send each other carefully selected passages from the prison "written inmate mail policy".
Or they could just use the cellphones they keep smuggling into prison somehow.
Just because someone could do something bad somewhere, somehow with the Bible doesn't mean it can be banned, even for prisoners.
Posted by: MPL | July 13, 2009 1:04 PM
If you are going to claim that the bible quotes are secret gang code, then you can keep ALL messages out. A quote from the Bill of Rights - GANG CODE... Page 162 from my Economics textbook - GANG CODE... Act 3, scene 2 of "As You Like It" - GANG CODE. I think the reason they didn't use that as their excuse is because it's a load of BS.
Posted by: Tom | July 13, 2009 1:18 PM
Yeah, I can really see cons sending this to each other, can't you? :D -DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | July 13, 2009 1:51 PM
I'm not surprised that fundie heads are exploding over this. They simply don't have the ability to tell the difference between forcing religion onto people, which the ACLU tries to prevent, and allowing people to choose to practice their religion, which the ACLU wants to protect. Fundie thinking is so black-and-white that they think the only alternative to forcing religion onto people is forbidding religion completely. They just don't understand the concept of freedom for people to choose for themselves.
Posted by: catgirl | July 13, 2009 3:30 PM
James Hanely Defensive Much?
Way to read your hostility into a message. I was thinking of how the ACLU is painted by the likes of Jay Seculow. And how ironic his ilk frame debates and discussions about the ACLU and the AU.
Sheesh.
As for the censorship issue. Coding is a very real problem in our jails. As I stated before, I would want to view more elements of the case.
We aren't dealing with Public School kids here. We are potentially dealing with hardened criminals who have proven that they do not respect the boundaries and civil rights of others.
That means there are certain assumptions that might go beyond ridiculous and could be dangerous.
Posted by: Seeing eye Chick | July 13, 2009 4:48 PM
Seeing Eye Chick,
Talk about defensiveness...I have no idea where you're coming from in this last comment. There certainly was no hostile intent toward you in my prior comment.
Posted by: James Hanley | July 13, 2009 5:04 PM
Seeing eye Chick:
But that doesn't actually address the issue at hand: Anything in a letter sent to or from a prison could be code. Hell, that letter the guy got from his mom might have been code without the Bible passages! "Love, Mom" really means "Kill your cellmate". "Dear Son" is actually "the guard in your cellblock takes a nap every day at 3 PM".
You could feasibly send anything whatsoever to a prisoner that could be a kind of code. Using that as a blanket excuse to remove all Bible passages from prisoner mail is absurd and unconstitutional.
Posted by: Sean Micheal | July 13, 2009 5:09 PM
These people are actually transcribing lengthy Bible passages? Don't the prisoners have their own Bibles? All you need is to give the reference, and save yourself a lot of writer's cramp. But there is a type of fundy who thinks that obsessively quoting from Scripture -- even when the book is a available to the audience -- is a sort of magic talisman.
Posted by: Eamon Knight | July 13, 2009 5:15 PM
Eamon: Actually, you have to go to a lot of trouble to get permission to provide a bible or other written materials into my local county jail or in any of the surrounding counties where I have practiced. Our local state (medium security) prison, on the other hand, has a chapel on the premises, and privately-funded chaplains readily available.
Posted by: kehrsam | July 13, 2009 5:48 PM
Shit lady, write your own material ffs. The real reason some people heart the bible so much? It's not for the cover to cover godly goodness, it's because it's chock full of public domain material!
Posted by: tincture | July 14, 2009 12:42 AM
tincture:
It may not have been three pages of different material. It may have just been a couple of verses from Liverwursticus--the ones that say "Kill teh GAY". Just in case her son decides to be some other inmates bitch.
Posted by: democommie | July 14, 2009 8:51 AM
Ah, the confusion of ACLU bashers. They're so caught up with their Red Team/Blue Team model of morality (everything red team does is right by definition, everything blue team does is wrong by definition) that they're incapable of grasping the concept of other people who want to be referees, enforcing rules that apply to everyone.
Posted by: Bronze Dog | July 14, 2009 9:54 AM
I want to say thanks to those who pointed out the jail was probably trying to censor gang codes. I was entirely baffled by the prison's motivation, but that makes sense.
It does not justify it, though, of course, for the reasons others have pointed out. The ACLU is still right. But at least now I know what the prison officials were thinking...
Posted by: James Sweet | July 14, 2009 2:19 PM
You should really post a correction explaining that you do, of course, realize that "Tzarist Russia" did not send prisoners to "Soviet Gulags." I know it's a joke, but it's unsuccessful.
Posted by: randy | July 15, 2009 12:47 AM