Organizations and people are seldom what they seem, especially when their supporters and detractors can render misquoted comments or taken-out-of-context comments into deliberate efforts to deify or vilify by not looking at the totality of an organization’s or individual’s body of work.

Take the case in which some park rangers threatened to jail members of a faith-based charity organization for serving hot meals and distributing Bibles to homeless people on a state beach.

Or in one west Pennsylvania town where officials are using a zoning restriction to stop a small church from sheltering homeless people in its parsonage as it has done regularly for the last few years.

Immediately, many people would assume the most prominent defenders of the above-listed charitable efforts—in pursuing court action— would be evangelical groups, especially those that take up the constitutionality of restricting religious practices on public property. The groups would include those like Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the Christian Coalition or Moral Majority.

And certainly that would be accurate. But many would be surprised that such groups not only have a friend in Jesus, they have one in the American Civil Liberties Union.

They would be shocked to learn the ACLU of Southern California this year sued on behalf of the faith-based charity to allow its homeless outreach and food ministry to continue—on public property, specifically Doheny State Beach.

The Pittsburgh branch also has gotten involved in the west Pennsylvania zoning dispute.

The ACLU, which has been demonized more than Osama bin Laden by some on both sides of the liberal-conservative political, theological and ideological divides, and its supporters are, after all, godless liberals, right? They are the heathens interested only in removing God from the tax-supported venues in our society.

A glance at the ACLU Website provides other examples of how the organization has intervened to allow religious activities, including the following:

The ACLU of Louisiana (2008) filed a brief before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit supporting an individual’s right to quote Bible verses on public streets in Zachary, La.

The ACLU and the ACLU of Texas (2008) filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Texas Supreme Court in support of mothers who had been separated from their children by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. The DFPS seized more than 450 children from their homes in Eldorado, Texas, following so far mostly unsubstantiated allegations of child abuse by some members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The state had to return the children to their homes pending further investigation of abuse reports.

The ACLU of Florida (2007) argued in favor of the right of Christians to protest against a gay pride event held in the City of St. Petersburg. The city looked at limiting opposition speech, including “religious speech” to designated “free speech zones.” St. Pete revised its law after it got a letter from the ACLU.

The ACLU of Wisconsin (2007) filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that individual pharmacists should be able to refuse to fill prescriptions that violate their religious principles—generally this has involved contraceptives—provided that patients can obtain prescriptions from willing providers in a safe and timely manner.

There are numerous other ACLU interventions that belie its bad rap as an organization that devilishly pursues a strict separation of religious and secular life.

So the ACLU’s track record cannot be neatly divided into black and white or righteous and right/wrong.

Nor can other organizations or individuals. As such, consider this an illustration that should assure some folks that our new president will not be all of what anyone anywhere on the political spectrum expects, hopes for or dreads.

We already know he is black and white. We should prepare for the times when he will be righteous and right and righteous and wrong and right and wrong.

These times lie ahead and how we see where he stands depends on where we sit on whatever issue grabs our attention.