Texas and others are already into trouble for misusing tax payer funds for
religious purposes:
"Government should never fund religion," Mr. Goldsmith said. "It can fund the soup, it can fund the shelter, it shouldn't fund the Bibles."
Mr. Goldsmith acknowledged, however, that it would be difficult to detect groups that misuse government grants. "Is it possible to move the money on the other side of the line? Of course," Mr. Goldsmith said.
Some of the constitutional issues the administration faces are foreshadowed in the lawsuits filed against states since the start in 1996 of a provision in the welfare bill known as charitable choice, the legislation championed by John Ashcroft, then a senator from Missouri, that allowed religious groups to contend for government contracts to help welfare recipients adjust to the work world.
Texas, for example, gave $8,000 to the Jobs Partnership of Washington County, a program that required participants to study Scripture and taught them, in its own words, "to find employment through
a relationship with Jesus Christ."
Now the state is being sued in Federal District Court in Austin by the American Jewish Congress and the Texas Civil Rights Project, which claim that the Jobs Partnership bought Bibles for students. In evaluation forms, a third of the program's students said they had been pressured to join a church or change their beliefs.
"The government was funding a program where religion is built into the warp and woof," Mr. Stern said. "Religious indoctrination is the essence of the program, and we think the essence of the First Amendment is that government cannot fund that sort of effort."
Another significant issue is that the White House initiatives, like the charitable choice rules, allow groups that receive government money to discriminate based on religion in deciding whom to hire and fire.
The Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children, which receives financing from the state, is being sued for firing one of its counselors after a picture of her at a gay rights parade appeared in a photography exhibit at a county fair. The agency said it had the right to dismiss an employee it did not consider an
appropriate role model. The suit, now in federal district court in Kentucky, is being brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State."
Excerpt from Nudging Church-State Line, Bush Invites Religious Groups
to Seek Federal Aid
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
From The New York Times
January 30, 2001
nytimes.com |
