January 02, 2006
blessed are the subscribers
Evangelicals are waging war on the First Amendment outside Dover, so now that the Thomas More Center has rendered Intelligent Design a lame irreparable sham, it's a suitable time to turn attention to less secure frontlines.
In Indiana, the state legislature had traditionally opened each session with a non-demoninational prayer; which, over time, grew "systematically sectarian," according to U.S. District Judge David F. Hamilton, who ordered the Indiana House to clean up their act. In a show of partisan idiocy, both democrats and republicans have vowed to disobey the court:
Terry Goodin, a Democrat who rejects Hamilton's order, is among at least two dozen House members who have asked to give Wednesday's prayer. He said he would "absolutely" speak Christ's name if given the chance.
So there's that, despite a fairly clear Supreme Court guideline set forth in Marsh v. Chambers, 463 US 783 (1983), where Burger found a Chaplain's prayer that began each legislative session not violative b/c there was no "suggestion that choosing a clergyman of one denomination advances the beliefs of a particular church."
Which is precisely what Indiana is up to.
For what it's worth, Burger's opinion in Marsh strenuously avoids the Lemon test, probably because he knew it'd fail, as it did at the 8th Circuit.
Then there's faith based funding encroachment, which everyone knew was coming, but "vague government rules" and "a lack of government monitoring" has forced the ACLU to police the various and sundry unconstitutional forays through the courts. In one of many snippets in a decent Chicago Trib article (subscription req'd), we find...
In the past year, the Health and Human Services Department suspended a grant of more than $1 million to Silver Ring Thing after the ACLU of Massachusetts sued the department, accusing it of mixing religion with the sexual abstinence message. At the shows, Silver Ring Thing openly urged teenagers to commit their lives to Jesus Christ, and the rings it sold were inscribed with a New Testament verse.
And this:
The existing regulations are meant to prevent cases such as that of Joseph Hanas. After he pleaded guilty to marijuana possession, a county drug court judge in Michigan gave the 23-year-old Flint construction worker a choice: agree to live for a year at Inner City Christian Outreach, a faith-based residential facility, or be sent to jail. Hanas chose Inner City, which is run by a Pentecostal church.At Inner City, staffers told Hanas that his Roman Catholic faith was "witchcraft" and prevented his priest from visiting him or giving him his rosary beads, Hanas said.
And instead of substance-abuse treatment, Hanas said he was forced to read the Bible several hours each day, attend five hours of church on Sundays and was told the only way he would successfully complete the program was to convert to the Pentecostal church.
Untethered by silly First Amendment restraints overseas, US Evangelicals are spreading Jesus's message of quid pro quo to tsunami victims:
Speaking to the daily "Svenska Dagbladet" the head of Swedish Save the Children’s tsunami relief in southeast Asia says in some places it feels like the 19th century, when missionaries demanded conversion as a condition for food and clothing.The newspaper says that when its reporters visited several orphanages, the children, who were Buddhist, were wearing t-shirts with slogans like "God loves you" and "Jesus is the way".
This last story underscores the necessity for separating religions from taxpayer money. Some religious factions, when left to fend for themselves in an unregulated marketplace, will waste no time abusing the presumptive good will that religious groups too often enjoy. Too many religions care less for co-existing or improving peoples' lots than they do converting, witnessing, and trumpeting their religious message via all available publicity conduits. And there really is no better publicity conduit than the implied government endorsement that faith based funding provides. Under this regime, the government pimps out hundreds of religious programs along with the simple, barely enforceable admonition to 'behave' knowing full well that providing purely secular relief is antithical to their nature.
posted by scott pilutik at January 2, 2006 04:39 PM