A "Smell Test" for payments from tax revenues?

In his Letter to The Editor at the WSJ, Hendrik Van den Berg of Lincoln, Nebraska begins by seeming to make the point that the ACLU has the right to question where public tax dollars are spent. At first, I give him the benefit of doubt that he seems to make the libertarian argument that tax dollars should not be spent on anything. Instead, he just creates his own "smell test" where only anything that has any reference to God, not be funded.

In your Nov. 26 editorial "Bashing the Boy Scouts" you bash the ACLU for pursuing legal actions to stop the use of public funds to support the Scouts, using the term "silly" to describe such actions and the military's reaction to the ACLU's suit -- but you present no compelling argument why the ACLU is wrong. Whether you think that the Boy Scouts are part of "the bedrock of American life" is irrelevant. That the Boy Scouts "build character in young men" is also irrelevant to the argument. Whether the Boy Scouts lose when the ACLU gets the courts to rule against the use of public funds is not just irrelevant to your argument, but this argument hints at exactly the problem the ACLU is attempting to address: The many alleged "bedrocks" and "character builders" in our country all have the right to make their cases, but they have no right to government funded sponsorship.

The fact is that the Boy Scouts require members to believe in God. They have every right to set requirements for membership, and the courts have supported that right. But that requirement makes them a religious advocacy group. The constitution is very clear in this case: we have freedom of religion, not official sponsorship of religion. I certainly do not want to have my taxes paying for the Boy Scouts brainwashing young boys with ideas that clash with my convictions.
Hendrik Van den Berg
Lincoln, Neb.