Prayer breakfasts are held in public restaurants. Prayer vigils are held by private groups in public parks. I hear hymns pealing out of a nearby church steeple four times every day. People wear religious symbols and garments, and place religious objects in plain sight on and in their cars, in their offices, on their doors, in their windows. Religious displays visible from public streets appear all the time, though they are located on private property.

None of this is illegal, and none of it is opposed by the ACLU. None of these activities forces people to participate at public, non-sectarian events that are government sponsored, and they're not paid for by taxpayer dollars. Those are the acid tests.

In fact, in an incident that occurred maybe four years ago in a small town nearby, a local citizen protested the display of a manger scene, called a "creche" (pronounced "kresh") in this part of the country, on public land. The ACLU got involved on her behalf, and great wailing went up throughout the land. In their discovery phase, the ACLU's investigation revealed the fact that the land, which everyone in town assumed belonged to the town, was in fact the property of the nearby church that erected the creche every year. The ACLU said that its work was done, because it didn't care that there was a religious display, but only that it was using taxpayer-supported land. As this was not the case, they were no longer involved.

The church congregation and their other supporters were jubilant! Now, however, the upkeep of the land is the church's responsibility. This is also as it should be.

If, as you fear, the extremists will be gunning for private expression, don't be too surprised to find the ACLU opposing them. It's not made up of people who hate religion. It's made up of people like me. The idea is to support the Bill of Rights, which guarantees freedom of religion.

As for Ashcroft, he has been busy undermining the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth.

It's unfortunately true that porn receives a lot of First Amendment protection, but a principle is a principle. It might seem like the porn business receives more protection than religion, but I doubt that that's true. There are conditions that only make it look that way. For instance, porn isn't divided up into a lot of competing and often hostile denominations -- just differing, um, tastes. So the protection the porn industry demands isn't diluted. And porn, as a business, has a lot more ready cash without all the institutional expenses and is also a for-profit, which means it's lucrative and taxable.