Florida voters face choice over religion, politics

Orlando Sentinel ^ | April 29, 2012 | Anthony Man

[spacejunkie2001]

It sounds as appealing as apple pie: ensuring religious freedom.

In reality, a proposed amendment to the Florida Constitution facing the state's voters is a much more complicated, and combustible, combination of religion and politics.

Already, activists across the political spectrum are forming political action committees, holding news conferences and setting up websites as they mobilize for battle between now and November.

The focus of their attention is proposed Amendment 8, which would rewrite the "religious freedom" section of the state Constitution. It would remove the longstanding ban on taxpayer funding of churches, synagogues, mosques and other religious institutions and replace it with completely opposite language prohibiting state or local governments from withholding money based on religious belief.

It's a simple and necessary change, in the view of former state Rep. Juan Zapata, R-Miami, president of the newly formed Citizens for Religious Freedom and Non-Discrimination, which launched a "Yes on 8" campaign early this month, and Archbishop Thomas Wenski, spiritual leader of 1.3 million Roman Catholics in South Florida.

[spacejunkie2001]

This whole thing stinks to high heaven. I don’t trust ANYONE messing with the constitution, even if they have an R after their name.

Could you imagine the mosques getting boatloads of our tax dollars due to this? (not that they aren’t already through that imbecile in the WH).

[Little Ray]

Dunno.

If we ever get educational vouchers, we’ll need some similar language to allow church affiliated schools to use them.

All things considers, getting rid of idiotic “wall between religion and politics” could be good thing.

[Vigilanteman]

Exactly. And that's the dilemma in a nutshell.

I don't want some gubmint bureaucrat deciding that an Islamofacist Madrases to train jihadis is eligible for educational vouchers but that a Christian school held at your local Baptist Church is not.

[Jacquerie]

Florida's whack-job supreme court shot down school vouchers 10-12 years ago. They said it violated the constitutional guarantee of statewide “uniform education.” By that logic, private schools should have been shut down.

It was the same circus act that gave us two months of Gore v. Bush entertainment.

[June2]

It was 2002 when I lost faith in most of my fellow Floridians. That’s when we put pigs in our Constitution. Seriously....we have PIGS in the Florida Constitution. That told me all I needed to know about how much folks understand our government and the purpose of a constitution.

Sometimes I wonder how folks make it through life without understanding/comprehending the world around them.