In its fundraising appeal for 2014, “Moving Freedom Forward: What You and the ACLU Can Do in 2014,” the ACLU, while professing its devotion to religious freedom, stresses (certain) individual rights over institutional rights in a way that diminishes religious freedom. “For most Americans,” the fundraising letter asserts, “religious freedom means that each of us is free to make personal decisions about whom to love, when and if to worship, and whether or not to have children–based on our own beliefs and free of government interference.” But extremists, the letter warns, “want to turn that definition on its head. They claim that religious freedom means they are free to impose their religious beliefs on the rest of us.”

And just who are those American religious tyrants? Hobby Lobby and other organizations that, on moral grounds, are fighting for the freedom not to include certain contraceptives or abortifacients in the health insurance plans they offer their employees. Catholic hospitals that do not perform abortions. Business owners who, while they serve the general public, including LGBT persons, decline to put their energy and talent to use to commemorate gay weddings.

Are these nonprofit and for-profit organizations actually “imposing their religious beliefs” on everyone else? In fact, whatever their public-policy views might be . . .

• None of them has compelled the government to pass laws banning abortions or birth control pills or same-sex weddings.
• None of them has the power actually to keep those who desire to do so from offering services they themselves decline to offer.
• None of them has the power to keep customers or patients for choosing a different service provider–a service provider that gladly provides the services and benefits that the religious providers decline to supply.

On the other hand, if the ACLU has its way, many of these organizations will be conscience-bound to stop operating or will be penalized by government or will be compelled to change their policies, against their convictions. So who is it that is forcing their beliefs on whom? The ACLU ought to defend institutional rights and not undermine them.