The ACLU Has Lost Its Way
The organization now seems largely unable or unwilling to uphold its core values.
The lurid spectacle that is Johnny Depp’s $50 million defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife Amber Heard hasn’t just tarnished his star and hers with allegations that he beat her and violated her with a bottle or that she severed part of his finger and emptied her bowels in the marital bed. (Both deny wrongdoing, and Heard has countersued for $100 million.) Amid this grotesquerie, it might be possible to overlook the bizarre involvement of the ACLU. But the civil-rights organization’s cringeworthy role deserves closer scrutiny because of its centrality to the case, and because it exemplifies the degree to which the ACLU has lost its way in recent years.
