Expanding federal faith-based initiatives is unwise

Sen. Obama is being reported to seek to expand President Bush's faith-based initiatives program. This means federal dollars--tax money--going to organizations that have a legal right to discriminate against gay Americans. This also is likely to mean additional tax dollars going to policing all religious charities to make sure they don't violate the Civil Rights Act (and some will), to make sure they don't proselytize (and some will), and engage in a host of not-so-charitable activities that (for some such organizations will) include distributing anti-choice literature, engaging in reversion therapy, and engaging in other forms of subtle and sometimes not subtle coercion.

That is what you get when you blend church and state: a mess.

What makes faith-based organizations faith-based is religious belief. That's why "faith" is in the term "faith-based." No federal dollars should go to such organizations. Obama is wrong on this issue.

Remember that the Roman state from Constantine onward ceded the care of the poor to the church; the church went from being a tolerated religion to the only legal one (basically mandatory) in no small part because of the power the church accumulated when it effectively became an arm of the state.

Am I suggesting that faith-based charities getting federal dollars will lead to theocracy? Of course not.

Besides Iraq, the hallmark of what in the UK is referred to as Bush-Blairism is a watering down of the division between religion and governance. It is so hated there because Britain is, after all, not only the home of many organizations like the "Sally Army," but because there is no official separation of Church and State. The British people know full well that religious charity almost always comes with strings attached. They know that faith-based means what it says: religion. And they know it first-hand because for centuries they have been taxed to-—in part—-prop up such religion-based practices.

Faith-based federal initiatives are a Pandora's Box.

Comments

[SKY]

Questions? Where is this group coming from? Are they wanting society to get better or is this a social statement? Thank you