Unfortunately, the government sometimes strays from this ideal by, for example, using taxpayer dollars to support religious activities
As long as government continues to daily and directly violate the actual text of the 1st amendment by prohibiting the free exercise of my religion, periodically posting the 10 commandments in a courtroom is never going to get me agitated. The ACLU acts like we haven't had a solid decade now of everyone working in government being mandated to take sensitivity training that directly violates the religious beliefs of state employees.
No, two wrongs don't make a right, but I won't care about the wrong the ACLU cares about until it cares about the greater wrong.
erecting religious symbols on government land
I don't see the ACLU defining "government land" nor defending having it in the first place. Again, as a result of their complacency I don't care what they have to say on the matter.
discriminating on the basis of religion in government programs.
Already covered above.
These actions violate the Establishment Clause, which recognizes that religious freedom thrives best when the government stays out of it. Matters of religious belief should be left to individuals and faith communities, not to governments or political majorities.
Thugee.
It was a murder cult in India until the 19th century. Adherents would pretend to be a group of travelers on a road, and gain the confidence of other travelling groups under the guise of safety in numbers. Then the thugs would spring on the unsuspecting group and strangle them all in the name of Kali.
Various people have tried to pretend this religion never existed - and I suspect that is primarily because this is an unequivocal case of the colonial British government doing something good. When they found out this was a thing in the 1700s, they stamped it out.
That's because the British were still Christian at that point. And I'll own that, as a Christian - Christianity does not play well with death cults.
When Christians find out your culture regularly holds festivals where you paint your pyramid red with the blood of human sacrifices, equal treatment of religion goes right out the fucking window. Yeah, it would have been really nice if the people who stamped that out weren't such jerks. It would have been nice if they didn't totally destroy their knowledge along with their culture. But letting it coexist as-is was not an option.
Likewise, if your woke cult includes ritual child sacrifice either through the murder of the unborn or the disfigurement of existing children, Christianity doesn't have any toleration for that.
And we'll all own that. We're actually the first to shun the Christians-in-name-only who have started worshipping this modern Molech.
And the sad thing is, all you have to do is pretend not to be a death cult. There were mosques in Constantinople centuries before it fell, because they were relatively tolerant as long as you weren't a death cult. And Islam did a fine job hiding the fact that it is, so they got to practice their religion even in the longest lasting Christian empire in history.
So yeah, the ACLU can pretend like they're holding Christianity back. But the question is, from what? We're getting awful close to the point where most Christians are pretty up to speed on the fact that this government actively supports at least one death cult, and when a critical mass gets clued in, well, you're going to see an awful lot of people ready to trash this government at that point.
Anti-statists have a choice for the moment. Are we going to support the traditional low-brow narrative of the ACLU, or are we going to recognize Christianity for what it is - a generally well-meaning and tolerant faith with a line that you can't cross without also shutting down discussion? I don't want to see that side of Christianity awakened any more than the ACLU - but despite the fact that this bear is sleeping, and despite the fact that you have to poke it a lot to wake it up.... it's still a fucking bear.