I wrote last month on Obama’s changes to what is now known as the “Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.” I questioned how the continuance of non-profit religious charity groups getting their own office and funding separate from secular charity organizations is not in essence (at worst) a promotion of religious organizations over others. Why are they so special that they need or deserve a separate office/different rules from similar secular organizations, especially considering the constitutionally mandated separation between state and church? Why can’t they play by the same policies and rules that all other nonprofits must follow? When the original office was created under the Bush administration the reasoning seemed clear and in the years since has shown true: to purposefully give these religious groups no oversight so that they could illegally push their religions on other that they should be helping. Despite my sadness that the office even in a new form would continue to exist, I was hopeful that President Obama would at least bring in some oversight and assure these groups cannot violate the law any longer.
CNN reported today on some of these changes [cnn.com]. From the article:
President Obama on Thursday altered his predecessor’s controversial Office of Faith-Based Initiatives to ensure participating agencies do not discriminate in hiring.
A new executive order requires that religious groups receiving funding from the renamed Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships demonstrate to the government that all of their hiring practices are legal and nondiscriminatory.
The order is intended to strengthen the constitutional and legal grounding of the office, two senior administration officials told CNN.
Although it’s nice to see that the Obama administration will not allow religious discrimination in hiring practices of those organization receiving taxpayer funds, the claim that this “strengthen[s] the constitutional and legal grounding of the office” is disingenuous at best. As Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) [au.org] (an organization including both the religious and the nonreligious) has stated [au.org]: the office’s very existence is unconstitutional. To be frank, you can polish a turd (as The Mythbusters proved) [discovery.com], but it’s still a turd. You can make something unconstitutional a bit less illegal, but it’s still unconstitutional.
To be fair, the senior administration officials interviewed did admit that this change is not all that is needed:
“We think this is a key step forward. It doesn’t resolve all issues at the outset, but it does provide a mechanism to address difficult legal issues moving forward,” they said.
Discriminatory hiring is a problem, but it’s not nearly the biggest issue. Much worse, in my opinion, is preying on those who you are supposed to be helping. I can think of at least one time when an organization forced the homeless to listen to religious proselytizing before they could get the help they were supposed to be provided (I cannot find the news story at this time. I will update when I do.) That is the sort of disgusting action we need to be assured will not happen any longer.
The office’s role will not be to “favor one religious group over another — or even religious groups over secular groups,” Obama said in remarks at the annual National Prayer Breakfast.
If this is true, that the role will not be to favor religious groups over secular, why do they need their own office at all? I’m keeping a close eye on this important issue. As more information is revealed, I’ll report it to you.
The Secular Coalition for America released their own response [secular.org], arguably even more critical than mine.
