Why the ACLU is right

NAMBLA and the Attleboro cult case

When it comes to taking righteous but unpopular stands, the American Civil Liberties Union has no peers. The organization can be counted on to advocate regularly for two groups you wouldn't want marching around on your home streets: the neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.

This week the organization went out on the civil-liberties limb once again by defending two more groups you wouldn't want setting up shop nearby: the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), and a religious sect thought to have caused the deaths of two children born to cult members. But in both cases, the ACLU is on the side of the US Constitution.

The family of murder victim Jeffrey Curley is suing NAMBLA, charging that the organization -- which advocates the right of grown men to have sex with boys -- caused Jeffrey's death. In many ways, it's easy to sympathize with the Curley family. But it's hard to see how NAMBLA is responsible for the gruesome rape and murder Curley, who was 10 years old when he died.

Charles Jaynes, one of the two men now in prison for committing the crime, reportedly viewed the NAMBLA Web site (which is no longer online) before luring the Cambridge boy into his car. Police later discovered NAMBLA literature in Jaynes's home. In their $200 million lawsuit, the Curley family claims that NAMBLA incited him to molest and murder their son.

It's understandable that the Curleys want to give meaning to Jeffrey's senseless death by holding someone -- or some group -- responsible for inciting the actions of Jaynes and Salvatore Sicari. But by that standard, one could argue that filmmaker Oliver Stone is liable for the "copycat" murders committed by Louisiana teenagers after the release of his 1994 film Natural Born Killers, or even for the massacre at Columbine High School -- the movie was reportedly a favorite of Dylan Klebold's and Eric Harris's.

By representing NAMBLA, the ACLU is fighting to uphold the free-speech and free-association principles laid out in the First Amendment -- principles that protect even the most offensive ideas and associations. Few would argue that NAMBLA's goal is not offensive. Fewer still would publicly defend the organization's right to advocate it. But true proponents of civil liberties must do so. "We don't want to give government the power to make decisions about who speaks and who doesn't," says Massachusetts ACLU director John Roberts.

Just as important is the ACLU's support for the pregnant Rebecca Corneau, a religious-sect member whose previous child died shortly after birth from what are believed to have been minor birth complications. Cult members say Corneau's baby Jeremiah was stillborn, but diary accounts by some sect members indicate that the baby died because his airways were not cleared. Samuel Robidoux, a child born to another cult member, is thought to have starved to death at 10 months old because he stopped nursing. The 13-member fundamentalist-Christian sect to which Corneau belongs doesn't subscribe to the miracles of modern-day medicine -- or, for that matter, to the legal system. Indeed, members renounce doctors, lawyers, and even the United States itself. Given all that, it's not at all unreasonable to think harm could come to Corneau's as-yet-unborn baby.

Kenneth P. Nasif, a juvenile-court judge in Attleboro, Massachusetts, ordered the arrest of Corneau, who is thought to be about eight and a half months pregnant, after she refused to submit to a state-ordered medical examination. She is now being held at a state facility in Roxbury that houses incarcerated pregnant women.

Although she has declined legal assistance, the Massachusetts ACLU will file an amicus curiae memo to accompany Corneau's scheduled September 7 appearance before Nasif, asking the judge to reconsider his decision. Although Nasif claims that his order is an attempt to protect the unborn child from future harm, his action opens up a Pandora's box. Under the judge's reasoning, what's to stop the state from imprisoning women who endanger their fetuses by smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, or failing to get prenatal care? And what's to stop the state from locking up people who exhibit tendencies to commit a crime -- even though they have not yet done so? Despite the state's best efforts, it has not been able to find Corneau or other cult members responsible for Jeremiah's and Samuel's deaths.

As ACLU attorney Sarah Wunsch argues, if there were evidence that Corneau had committed a crime, she would have been charged with it. "The government is not allowed to lock people up on fear of future action," she points out.

The Curley and Corneau cases are out of the mainstream of our common experience. And in an odd way, that's what makes them so important and so intellectually inconvenient. But the fact of the matter is, the Constitution is a damned inconvenient document. In an age of focus groups and opinion polls, the ACLU's unflagging dedication to that document manages to be two seemingly contradictory things at once: old-fashioned and refreshing.

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