Forty Years Ago This Week: The American Civil Liberties Union was making a large advertising buy, taking out full page ads in newspapers across Colorado. The theme: “If the Moral Majority has its way you’d better start praying.”

But Jim Joy, state ACLU director, said in a news conference that the ad was not only a warning but a solicitation for membership and contributions to the Colorado ACLU. And Joy said that the ads that had been printed in the Rocky Mountain News the week before had already returned a substantial profit.

“Normally when we run ads of this type,” Joy said, “we hope to receive enough contributions to pay for the cost of the ad, we’ve already received contributions far in excess of the placement cost.”

Political activist Walt Kinderman, whose leanings sided with the sentiment of the ad, told The Colorado Statesman that, “The ad is a warning that the Moral Majority – although appearing to represent American patriotism – is against our constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression and separation of church and state, threatens academic freedom, and denies whole groups of people the equal protection of the laws.”

The Moral Majority, which had just taken shape at the end of the previous decade as a movement, was founded by conservative Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell Sr. and was seeking to heat up its involvement in Republican politics nationwide – particularly in presidential campaigns.

Joy added that the Moral Majority’s agenda included constitutional amendments that would impose prayer in schools and outlaw all abortions as well as legislation that would “strip federal courts of their authority even to hear constitutional cases.”

“They are … a radical anti-Bill-of-Rights movement,” Joy said. “They seek not to conserve traditional American values, but to overthrow them. Their agenda represents massive government intrusion. And conservatives as well as liberals should stand up to them.”

Twenty Years Ago: State Senate Minority Leader John Andrews, R-Centennial, criticized the Democrat majority in the Senate for abolishing the transportation committee and then subsequently reinstating it as a subcommittee.

“The Senate Transportation Committee … is now legislatively powerless but expected to perform miracles in the next 40 days,” Andrews said during a committee hearing.

“Majority Leader (Bill) Thiebaut also claims he wants to protect money for transportation projects,” Andrews said. “Apparently he has forgotten his own amendment to the House Bill 1267 highway funding bill … reduced next year’s SB 1 money by $44 million.”

At a press conference Thiebaut admitted that the state’s transportation infrastructure was already overloaded and would be under even more pressure as another million people were expected to move to Colorado by 2011.

“Yet we have no strategy to address the impact that growth will have on our ability to move people and goods around the state,” Thiebaut said.

It was the fault of the Colorado Department of Transportation, Thiebaut said, who had concentrated “almost entirely on highways while paying almost no attention to a multi-modal plan that may include bike trails and light rail.”

Andrews labeled Thiebaut’s efforts a “clumsy attempt at damage control.”

Fifteen Years Ago: Sen. Deanna Hanna, D-Lakewood, resigned after an ethics committee was convened by Senate Majority Leader Jen Gordon, D-Denver. Hanna had written letters to a Jefferson County real estate organization demanding “reparations” for supporting her challenger in her reelection campaign.

Preparations had already begun for a recall election of Hanna.

In her formal resignation letter, Hanna iterated that her ” … single momentary lapse of judgement” would not overshadow the quality of her work and her commitment to her ideals.

Hanna said that she believed “the legal and ethical process when viewed in context” would absolve her of any wrongdoing but that the “scorched-earth nature of politics today … would overtake the work of the ethics committee.”

Rep. Joe Stengel, R-Littleton, who was also under investigation over his per diem expenses resigned his House leadership position but not his legislative seat.

Rachael Wright is the author of the Captain Savva Mystery series, with degrees in Political Science and History from Colorado Mesa University, and is a contributing writer to Colorado Politics and The Colorado Springs Gazette.