The Maine Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1968 by a group of Maine lawyers who decided it was high time that Maine had its own American Civil Liberties Union state affiliate. The mission of the MCLU is to dedicate itself to preserving and defending the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, better known as the Bill of Rights.

When a friend learned recently that I am a proud board member of the MCLU, his reaction was: “They seem like very nice people, but they are so wrong about so many things.”

Those of us who belong to the dominant culture, that is to say, white, male, middle class, American, Christian and heterosexual, may have trouble understanding what life is like for those who are not in this group.

The MCLU was formed to serve as a counterweight to the sometimes oppressive pressure of the dominant culture and government against individuals, and to protect members of a nondominant group (poor, black, gay, female) from the desire of some of the dominant culture to force them to conform to their ideas and ideals.

Sometimes the ACLU and MCLU are active in sympathetic cases. Just recently, Mildred Loving passed away. She married her high school sweetheart and three weeks later in 1958 the police, tipped off by an informant, burst into their bedroom. Their crime: It was against the law for a black to be married to a white in Virginia. The ACLU took the case and in 1967 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional.

At other times, because of the principle involved, the MCLU and ACLU sometimes find themselves defending and going to court on behalf of despicable people, whose rights have been trampled on by the government. The ACLU is now planning to defend Guantanamo prisoners, as there are real concerns about the fairness of the U.S. military commissions.

It’s never about whether we like our clients – it is about defending their rights.

It is no coincidence that the MCLU was founded during the height of the Vietnam War in 1968, when people started demonstrating against the war and passions ran high. During periods of national stress, the potential for abuse of individuals is highest and the government may engage in unconstitutional behavior that, in retrospect, is clearly wrong. The U.S. Government put 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent into concentration camps in the American Southwest during World War II. No one now thinks that was constitutional or necessary.

Once again we are at war and again, almost predictably, there is an overreaction by government. Is the provision in the Patriot Act that allows the FBI to demand your medical records from your doctor and then forbids him to tell you about it really necessary to fight the war on terror?

I got involved with the MCLU a few years ago because of its admirable record of giving a voice to those who need advocacy and are unable to do so themselves. I grew up in the Netherlands and my best friend there never got to know his father’s grandparents. Being Jewish, they were deported and perished during World War II, in part because the Dutch government had an effective centralized demographic registry which included religious affiliation. (This is one of the reasons Real ID is a bad idea.)

So, to my friend who made that comment, I say, if it were not for the MCLU, who would be there to take up the cause for those unable to do so for themselves?

Jacob Gerritsen, M.D., is a resident of Camden and a member of the Maine Civil Liberties Union board of directors.