Why Does the ACLU Support Live Sex Shows in Oregon?

This is a partial transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," October 11, 2005, that has been edited for clarity.

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BILL O'REILLY, HOST: The lead story tonight. Why, why does the ACLU want live sex shows? Joining us now from Naples, Florida is Alan Sears, the author of the book "The ACLU Versus America."

See, I just don't know what's in it for these people. You know, it's — I just don't get it. Can you explain it to me?

ALAN SEARS, AUTHOR "THE ACLU VS. AMERICA": Well, Bill, I wish I could fully explain it to you, but this is actually the radical agenda of this organization from the beginning. It's turned the Constitution on its head. In this case, when we talk about sex, they want to convert so-called live sex acts or sex in front of an audience for money, all these different type of things, into free expression, free speech, under the First Amendment of the constitution or the respective state amendments.

And in this Oregon case, your listeners need to know how incredibly bizarre this opinion is. This is not just somebody up on stage maybe showing a little bit of flesh. There was actually one of the cases sexual acts performed. One of the performers was under 18. And without these laws and the police in there to enforce them, they would have never found out there was an underaged performer.

But in the other case, it was to do away with what they call the four foot rule. It was the rule to keep men from touching the women who are up there dancing.

Now the ACLU, Bill, has long supported these kind of radical things, all the way back to Roger Voll in 1919. They favor the legalization of, for example, prostitution. They do not believe there should not be any government regulation on prostitution whatsoever.

They don't believe in zoning laws that deal with these types of so-called adult entertainment. If the ACLU had its way, you'd have these in every neighborhood, in every street corner, because you could not prescribe, for example, the number of feet away from a church, or from a school, or from a preschool.

But Bill, I guess that's consistent with their view on supporting NAMBLA and opposing laws and restrictions on child sex predators and their support of child pornography.

It really is very difficult to understand why they have such a coercive agenda, but a couple of clues. For a long time, they held up sort of a banner of tolerance. They said we support all sorts of general civil liberties. I don't think they ever did in a real full way when you examine the record. That's why we wrote the book, Bill.

But when you look at it for a while, for a number of years, up until maybe the last 10, 12 years, they said we are a tolerant organization. We support other ideas.

More and more, it's their agenda. For example, in Louisiana, they're demanding that public officials that allowed somebody to say something about God in the wrong place should be sent to jail.

And so in Oregon, here's the ACLU view. Live sex acts, customers touching sex performers for money, no problem, even when there's an under 18-year-old involved in the act. But if we have somebody talking about God in the wrong place at the wrong time, send them to jail.

O'REILLY: OK. All right, but look, this guy, Baldwin, who founded the organization, in your book, you chronicle this guy, who's a totally off the wall guy and didn't want any limitations or boundaries in personal behavior at all.

But Romero — Anthony Romero, the head of the ACLU now, has become — you know, it is — people, when I say this stuff to them, they think that I'm exaggerating. They think I'm making it up, that NAMBLA.

SEARS: Exactly.

O'REILLY: .North American Man Boy Love Association, you have a right to express and teach people, which is what the NAMBLA Web site did, how to rape children. You have a right to do that.

SEARS: Exactly.

O'REILLY: .but you don't have a right to sing a Christmas carol in a public school.

And you know, if you were from Lithuania coming over here, you'd go oh, come on, O'Reilly, this is not true. But it's absolutely true.

But what I don't get is how could they have 400,000 people supporting them, including a bunch of movie stars and, you know, taking the high moral ground that we're defending the nation? It's just crazy.

SEARS: You know, one of the things that I think, Bill, is that most people that support the ACLU really don't understand how radical the group itself is. When I debate a lot of their lawyers across the country, they do what you just said. They challenge me. They say that's not the position of the national ACLU. That's not what headquarters wants. And I outline it. I read their policy guide with these crazy radical positions. I quote their leaders who have said they want to send people that disagree with them to jail. And they just sit there sort of spellbound.

In fact, one of the things we did when we wrote the book was interview a number of former members of the ACLU, former lawyers. We quote a number of former board directors, who basically woke up and smelled the coffee or smelled the totalitarianism, as you said earlier.

O'REILLY: Well, they're winning. The ACLU is now - you know, and as I said, if they put this on the ballot in Oregon, the folks will go, come on, we don't want this kind of a state here. We — no zoning laws. I need to buy a house and then two houses down, Larry opens Larry's Deli and Sex Emporium, but that could happen. And it will happen in Oregon.

SEARS: Well, the good news is we do have some lawyers who are standing up. And we are winning when we have lawyers in the courts and the cases. And we're actually doing better than not.

O'REILLY: All right.

SEARS: We're winning more cases than we're losing right now.

O'REILLY: Mr. Sears, thanks very much. And once again, The Oregonian newspaper out there in Portland also filed a friend of the court brief in the half of this live sex deal. So all you Oregonian subscribers should know that.

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