Have you ever tried to do alignment among multiple objects, keeping one locked? This is a bit 'different from what was done in Freehand, Illustrator should do in order to be able to decide which is the key object, ie one to which other objects must be true. This is the procedure:
1) select all items, 2) click on what you must not move (the key object);
3) click on the selected type of alignment in the window lines.
In this way objects are aligned to the object key.
