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Text Box: Annual Report of the
Legal Panel for 2006 The Pinellas ACLU
legal panel is a group
of volunteer
cooperating attorneys who meet each month to receive and discuss cases in the form of written complaints received either directly by mail or through the state ACLU office. These volunteer attorneys investigate and take on cases pro se based on their own experience and interests. The cases selected by the legal panel are typically cases where the civil or constitutional rights of individuals have been unduly restricted by government action, where a large number of individuals may be affected, where the issues are legal rather than factual, and where the complainant has no other recourse or remedy. In those cases which are not "ACLU cases," we attempt to put the individual in touch with an attorney or agency that can help. This year, we consulted with representatives of the Veterans for Peace, including Dwight Lawton, in their efforts to gain admission to Pinellas County public high school campuses to counsel students on alternatives to military service. The school board has just recently passed a new policy that will permit groups such as Veterans for Peace to come onto high school campuses to speak with students on alternatives to military service. When St. Petersburg police slashed the tents of the homeless because they were on public property, the Pinellas ACLU was included in discussions among national homeless advocacy groups interested in seeking a just solution with the City of St. Petersburg. We are particularly concerned about reactive City ordinances passed this year which have a discriminatory effect against the homeless and compel them to seek shelter with religious groups in lieu of arrest and criminal prosecution, which raises serious First Amendment religious establishment and free exercise issues. We represented activist Nadine Smith of Equality Florida when she was arrested and criminally charged at Largo City Hall during the public debates concerning city manager

Book Review

Bishop Challenges Christianity to Embrace Gays

by Wendy Risk

The ecclesiastical battle over homosexuality is intense, irrational, threatening, and hysterical, according to author John Shelby Spong, a retired Episcopal bishop of Newark. His new book, Sins of the Scriptures: Exposing the Bible’s Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love, tackles the issues of the Bible and its relationship to women, the environment, homosexuality, children, and anti-Semitism.

Fundamentalists use the Bible to support their own prejudices, relying on paranoia and despair to spread their negative message. The Bible’s 66 books were written over the span of 1,200 years. Spong tackles and debunks the only nine texts that mention homosexuality. Spong cites two recent victories in the ecclesiastical war. First, Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Anglican Archbishop of Capetown and Nobel Peace Prize winner, has called for the full inclusion of gays in the church. Second, the U.S. Episcopal Church appointed an openly gay bishop. A brilliant writer and theologian, Spong provides a rigorous introduction to liberal Christianity. The ecclesiastical war pits love against prejudice. There is no better way to dissipate prejudice than to use scriptures and the words of a man of the cloth. Marchers in next year’s St. Pete Pride Parade now have a good resource for banner composition. (Abridged - Ed.)