Posted on 11/27/2004 2:50:54 PM PST by wagglebee
The Wisconsin-based atheist group Freedom From Religion Foundation is suing to cut off federal funding to a Christian child-mentoring program that helps troubled kids.
Last year, the federal government awarded a $225,000 contract, part of $9 million awarded to 52 Arizona groups, to Phoenix-based MentorKids USA, according to the Madison, Wisc.-based Capital Times.
The lawsuit, presided over by U.S. Judge John Shabaz, is demanding a summary judgment that federal funding of the program cease until the government "has a demonstrated plan in place to comply with its constitutional obligations," reports the Wisconsin paper.
Citing the First Amendment, the atheist foundation said, "Mentoring to convert is not a suitable social service to be provided by the government," said the report.
MentorKids USA was launched in 1997 by Orville Krieger, in partnership with Charles Colson's Prison Fellowship, "to address the needs of at-risk youth in the Phoenix, Arizona, metropolitan area by matching caring Christian adults with youth ages 8-17 who showed warning signs of becoming criminal offenders," says the Christian organization's website.
Originally called Phoenix MatchPoint, the group changed its name last January to MentorKids USA. It has a long and successful track record in mentoring children in trouble with the law, who have dysfunctional family backgrounds, have been physically or sexually abused or who are involved with drug or alcohol abuse. To date, MentorKids USA has helped over 500 kids.
In the program, mentors commit time each week to be a friend and role model for an at-risk youth. The mentors "offer concrete expressions of unconditional love and support to the mentee," says the group's website, "and the two participate in activities designed to build friendship, trust, and constructive values."
Some of the Freedom From Religion Foundation's "legal accomplishments," according to its website, include:
Winning the first federal lawsuit challenging direct funding by the government of a faith-based agency
Overturning a state Good Friday holiday
Winning a lawsuit barring direct taxpayer subsidy of religious schools
Removing Ten Commandments monuments and crosses from public land
Halting the Post Office from issuing religious cancellations
Ending 51 years years of illegal bible instruction in public schools
According to its website, the non-profit foundation was incorporated in Wisconsin in 1978 and is "a national membership association of freethinkers: atheists, agnostics and skeptics of any pedigree."
Why is it concerned with what it calls "state/church entanglement?"
"First Amendment violations are accelerating," says the group's website. "The religious right is campaigning to raid the public till and advance religion at taxpayer expense, attacking our secular public schools, the rights of nonbelievers, and the Establishment Clause.
"The Foundation recognizes that the United States was first among nations to adopt a secular Constitution. The founders who wrote the U.S. Constitution wanted citizens to be free to support the church of their choice, or no religion at all. Our Constitution was very purposefully written to be a godless document, whose only references to religion are exclusionary.
"It is vital to buttress the Jeffersonian 'wall of separation between church and state' which has served our nation so well."
But William Rehnquist, current chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, says this view put forth by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the ACLU and similar groups is a fiction and mockery of the true meaning of the First Amendment.
The Establishment Clause, explained Rehnquist in a 1985 opinion, "forbade establishment of a national religion, and forbade preference among religious sects or denominations. … The Establishment Clause did not require government neutrality between religion and irreligion nor did it prohibit the Federal Government from providing nondiscriminatory aid to religion. There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the Framers intended to build the 'wall of separation' [between church and state]."
I also think our positions are very close, but the rhetoric we use is important and I understand we may continue to have our differences. I respect your positions, though. And like you, I am adamant about allowing Christianity in our public arena. Christmas, memorial crosses, 10 commandment icons, civic prayer, all of those things should be welcomed. I think it's important to be careful about how we refer to those religious practices, however. I'm clearly more worried about that than most here on FR.
The question at hand has several facets. On a "conservative forum," the interesting ones beyond mere advocacy are where we might learn from our differences. I think rhetoric is important, and I think those who would manipulate the faithful know this.
On the issue of federal, state, county, and city funding for Christian outreaches (e.g. faith based ministries) I haven't made up my mind. I think involving faith in ministry to the poor is a very positive thing, and I think the secular approach of the government is aseptic and unfeeling; it is also easy to corrupt. Maybe what I really want is an option to donate a portion of one's taxes to an approved charity list. But the Islamic outreaches will sneak in and snag their share; they also get into our prison systems this way. So will the Wiccan, and the other non-western belief systems which I find to be superstitious and backward.
That only defers the problem. The feds would be able to determine who gets on and off the list.
Constitutionally (speaking of using language the right way), the federal government has no power to be involved in charity at all, either religious or secular.
It matters to a-theists. If they come from God, then they are "bad" and must be eliminated.
And the funny thing is that every religion in the world has the same basic rules.
Those rules are a manual from the manufacturer.
Try again, I said recent history.
I don't think the gov't should be involved in the "charity" business. I refer to gov't "charity" as "coercive philanthropy". I think all charity should be non-gov't, and no one should be forced. However, if gov't is to be involved, religion should not be used as a factor for exclusion from such programs.
Ping
I could just say that Allah and Karma would be different in that situation because they are false religions.
But leaving that aside for the moment, if our government were to fund Muslim "mentoring" programs (do Muslims "mentor"?) then that is a legal decision. If I would accept Christian mentoring, then I would have to accept Muslim mentoring. I wouldn't sue to stop it. I might work against it because I would worry about the results of raising children in the Islamic faith, but I wouldn't see it as illegal.
It seems that you have only selected one small slice of the problem to focus on. One can only speculate why.
Don't get paranoid...just being specific to the matter at hand. I'm a strict constitutionalist.
I'm not paranoid at all. I just always wonder why people look past the big issues to the peripheral ones.
Separation of church and state? Fine. Let all Christian charitable organizations from here on in give aid only to Christians. And Jewish charitable organizations also.
Let's see how many Muslim and pagan and third world people in this country step up to give aid to EVERYONE, like Christian organizations like the Salvation Army and others do.
I hope none of these bastards ever come looking for aid.
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