The letters of ACLU sound like the "very hiss of the anti-Christ" in Utah, according to author Linda Sillitoe. yet Spencer L. Kimball (the Mormon church president's son who founded the local chapter) attracted to the to the organization men and women who were motivated by religious activism. Utah chapter president Stephen Smoot (descendant of another Mormon leader) felt that the ACLU promoted the same values of justice and mercy as his own church. Michele Parish (a Methodist minister's wife) even described her ACLU directorship as "an answer to prayer". The current chapter leader defies other public perceptions. A grandmother, Carol Gnade nevertheless champions gay clubs in high schools, believing that society should tolerate diversity. As a public force in Utah for half a century, the American Civil Liberties Union has battled, among other injustices, the prejudice of one politician who wanted Salt Lake City's African Americans relocated to a ghetto neighborhood. Such discrimination survives in more subtle ways, such as in the public strip-search of a long-haired teenager whose "offense" was that he fit a police drug-user profile. It emerges in the detainment of a building subcontractor who was thought to be carrying "too much cash". Sillitoe's fast-paced, accessible history traces the local chapter's internal upheavals in tandem with its ongoing skirmishes with outside forces. In this tale of political clout and paranoia, law enforcement muscle and varying moralities, Sillitoe gives an inside view of the push an shove of competing agendas. "The safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people", a U. S. Supreme Court justice once observed. In taking on some of society's most vulnerable groups and marginalized individuals, Sillitoe concludes, the ACLU espouses in practical terms the creed of Utah's Mormon majority: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of th least of these. . . " Sillitoe's seven previous works include Salamander: The Story Of The Mormon Forgery Murders and Welcoming The World: A History Of Salt Lake County. -- Midwest Book Review -- amazon.com
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