ACLU'S TACTICS ARE BACKFIRING.

Byline: MARGARET A. BENGS Local View

THE American Civil Liberties Union is running scared. Its strong-arm tactics to extort cities and other organizations to strip religious symbols from the public square are finally backfiring.

On Aug. 1, the U.S. Senate unanimously voted to take federal control of the Mount Soledad Veterans Memorial in San Diego. This was to prevent a single atheist and his ACLU-backed attorney from forcing San Diegans to tear down the cross that has stood as the site's centerpiece since 1954.

On July 19, the House of Representatives voted to remove federal courts from jurisdiction over the Pledge of Allegiance -- to block further attempts to remove the words ``under God.''

Perhaps most frightening to the organization is the pending Public Expression of Religion Act, which would stop channeling millions of tax dollars to ACLU attorneys in their efforts to purge the U.S. of religious symbols in the public square. The legislation is co-sponsored by, among others, Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon, who successfully carried the House bill protecting the Mount Soledad memorial.

The ACLU and other organizations have been able to exploit the Civil Rights Attorneys' Fees Act of 1976 to con judges into awarding them taxpayers' funding to defend the ``civil rights'' of a tiny number of atheists who oppose religious symbols on public property, while trampling on the rights of millions of Americans to freedom of religious expression.

In the Mount Soledad case, the ACLU has bilked San Diego for an estimated $280,000. It scammed the city for a reported $950,000 in attorneys' fees when it moved to drive the Boy Scouts out of Balboa Park.

The threat of an ACLU suit sends public officials into spasms of fear.

In Los Angeles, the ACLU threatened the county Board of Supervisors with a lawsuit if officials did not remove a small cross from among the many symbols on its more-than-50- year-old county seal. The board publicly stated it feared court-ordered attorney fees to be paid by taxpayer funds if the ACLU prevailed. The county still was faced with paying an estimated $1 million to replace all its seals.

Similar suits have been brought against the city of Redlands for having a cross on its city seal; the Federal Mojave Desert World War I Veterans' Memorial, which includes a cross consisting of two pipes strapped together and mounted on a bank of rocks by veterans in 1934 (now ludicrously covered with a plywood box until litigation is completed); and numerous others.

``The ACLU has perverted, distorted and exploited the Civil Rights Act ... to turn it into a lawyer-enrichment act,'' stated Reese Lloyd, a former ACLU attorney, who now decries its ``terrorizing litigation tactics.''

The Public Expression of Religion Act would remove the authority for judges to award taxpayer monies in attorneys fees in Establishment Clause (``Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.'') cases involving litigation against religions icons and veterans memorials.

It would thus even the playing field by preventing the ACLU from getting rich with taxpayer dollars as it attacks religious symbols, while defendants receive nothing to fight for their rights.

The legislation still provides ``injunctive relief.'' Thus, a court can rule in the ACLU's favor and force the removal of a Ten Commandments display, for example, but it removes the monetary incentive for lawsuits. If it passes, the ACLU will no longer be able to shake down cities. The First Amendment not only forbids Congress from establishing a religion, it also prohibits Congress from making any law ``prohibiting the free exercise'' of religion or ``abridging the freedom of speech.''

After listening to weeks of exhaustive arguments by various factions at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin finally stated that without the aid of ``the Father of lights to illuminate our understanding,'' we shall succeed in this political building ``no better than the builders of Babel.'' He therefore moved ``that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of heaven and its blessing on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business.''

If our founders saw the wisdom of calling on God when creating our government, adorned the Capitol building with images in honor of him, and issued proclamations of Thanksgiving from its earliest days, how can anyone believe that the Constitution they created would force the toppling of images of him from mountaintops and rocks?