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ACLU’s Betrayal

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Clarissa

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And see what I just found:

aclu

HB2 is, of course, the toilet bill. The ACLU considers the incapacity to use the toilet it strikes one’s fancy on any particular day to use “disaster & shame.” But the incapacity of a little girl with Down Syndrome to get medical care her public employee parents paid for is not a big deal at all. Denying care to cancer patients is not hate and fear-mongering but a limitation on where you can and can’t shit is. 

I have to conclude that the ACLU has completely sold out to big business. 

Fuck you, ACLU.

14 responses to “ACLU’s Betrayal”

  1. Tal Hartsfeld Avatar
    Tal Hartsfeld

    This is a microcosm of what’s so wrong with societies in general:
    Not only having their priorities ass-about-face but also inundating the public with hyperbole red herring “issues” like they are the “central problems” while doing nothing about the issues that actually matter and have greater impact on a greater number of people.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Exactly. And it is shameful how easily people are baited into caring about these non-issues and sacrifice their actual interests to the scandal-mongering.

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  2. Shakti Avatar
    Shakti

    The ACLU is a single issue organization that deals with civil liberties. Access to health care is not a commonly understood civil liberty and it is not guaranteed by the Constitution or the laws of the United States. Otherwise we’d be looking at a much different health care system than the one we have now.

    You can be angry about the bathroom bill and think that’s not a fight they should be having (denial of public accommodation based on identity). But getting angry that they’re not saying anything about the insurance denial is like an NRA member getting mad the NRA isn’t saying anything about eminent domain even though eminent domain haters and NRA members often agree on many of the same issues.

    If you can make a strong case that in denying health insurance payments to public state employees the state of Illinois is infringing on those employees freedom of association, maybe you can get the ACLU to come in? I don’t remember them being active in the teachers’ union fight in Wisconsin at all.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I find it quite ridiculous that accessing the toilet of your whim is about civil liberties while getting the treatment you paid for is not. Something must be very wrong if this completely consumerist mentality has been openly adopted by the ACLU. If they are on the side of bored rich idiots who care about toilets and not on the side of sick little kids, then as I said, fuck them and their toilet liberties.

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      1. Shakti Avatar
        Shakti

        I find it quite ridiculous that accessing the toilet of your whim is about civil liberties while getting the treatment you paid for is not.

        Both are consumerist. And yes, it is ridiculous because so much of life is through participation in the market.

        I’m not saying it’s right, I’m saying that’s how they structure the organization and how they pick what battles to fight.

        Now if the situation was “The state of Illinois is refusing to remit insurance payments to insurance providers of a sick little girl because her parents are [gay, some national origin, Democratic, religion, race, protected class or something they think should be a protected class] or the little girl is..[protected class]” the ACLU would be all over it. Maybe.

        How are the class action suits/strikes by the state employees union going? Or are you stuck in arbitration?

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          No, they aren’t. Feeling entitled to whatever it strikes your fancy to possess is consumerist. Wanting to not be sick isn’t.

          And I insist that if anybody should be “a protected class” (which I find insane but if that’s how it’s got to be, then ok), then public servants should count while entitled rich penises who can’t tolerate the existence of anything they can’t immediately consume shouldn’t.

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          1. Shakti Avatar
            Shakti

            No, they aren’t. Feeling entitled to whatever it strikes your fancy to possess is consumerist. Wanting to not be sick isn’t.

            “Getting what you paid for” is very much market language at a basic level. Now, you and I think access to health care is not a consumerist thing– but a lot of people are voting and acting on the mentality that good health is a consumer good, service or experience. Or a consumer good/service/experience they think certain people shouldn’t be able to purchase. That’s why the insurance-as- compensation idea doesn’t stick in people’s heads in spite of the fact that people forgo higher wages in this country for health insurance through their jobs (if it’s offered, that is) since at least World War II.

            It’s gross. I know.

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  3. Z Avatar
    Z

    ACLU works on civil liberties. Those aren’t the same as human rights

    http://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=31546

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      It’s their choice to decide that whimsical toilet use is a civil liberty.

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      1. Z Avatar
        Z

        I used to react this way to some of the ACLU positions but now with greater understanding of how US law works I see why they slice things as they do.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Politics is transforming into a space of nothing but empty gestures. Cheap, showy gestures. Transgender people are dying by the hundred of poverty, lack of access to medical care, murder as a result of having to prostitute themselves. And these cynical clowns at the ACLU and the Democratic Attorney General’s Office are wailing about toilets. It’s a travesty.

          Of course, the ACLU has done some good work in the past. But it has become hopelessly outdated. And it won’t change unless we notice and prod it in a more productive direction.

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          1. Z Avatar
            Z

            Although it doesn’t work on poverty, it works on civil liberties. Yes these things are interconnected and there are countries where food security (for instance) is defined as a part of freedom. And yes, some so-called liberal politics now are just showy gestures. But ACLU is about civil liberties and non-discrimination, and it has about 20 court cases right now on transgender issues, on issues such as being fired for transgendering, etc. I am not sure it’s changed. Yes it has also defended civil rights of Nazis, which makes my skin crawl but hey — if rights are universal, they’re universal — and sometimes it takes cases that are on apparently minor issues because of the precedent set, etc.

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            1. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              Just like the entire issue of gay rights has been reduced to marriage – an issue that’s heavily consumerist and profitable – the entirety of transgender rights battle has become about toilets. Civil liberties are being redefined in a way that is strictly pro-business.

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              1. Z Avatar
                Z

                Yes, although I wouldn’t say that’s ACLU driven. Still, pointing it out to them is worthwhile.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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