Hypocrisy’ Seen In New ‘Religious Freedom’ Initiative

[nosmokes]

original-new standard


‘Hypocrisy’ Seen In New ‘Religious Freedom’ Initiative
by Michelle Chen

Feb. 28 – As the White House touts efforts to protect Americans from religious discrimination, advocates of church-state separation say the Bush administration is supporting organizations and policies that trample religious freedom.

At a conference of the Southern Baptist Convention last Tuesday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced the First Freedom Project, a White House initiative to "strengthen and preserve religious liberty" in the United States. Gonzales promised the leaders of the conservative Christian group that the administration was committed to defending religious people from discriminatory policies – like bans on singing Christian hymnals at a community center, or zoning laws restricting the expansion of a local church.

But the organization Americans United for the Separation of Church and State has blasted the initiative. The group says a report publicized along with the initiative exposes the Justice Department's biased enforcement of civil rights to advance a conservative Christian agenda. The report documents the Department's actions on religious-discrimination since 2001.

In one case cited in the report, government attorneys investigated a Texas Tech University biology professor who stated on his website that he would only write medical-school recommendation letters for students who affirmed a belief in evolution. Rather than face allegations that some students were "excluded from higher educational opportunities because of their religious beliefs," the professor eventually agreed only to require that students explain, but not affirm the validity of, evolutionary theory.

The report also highlights the Justice Department's defense of a controversial school-voucher plan in Florida. In a lawsuit challenging the program, which would enable students to transfer from substandard public schools to supposedly superior private ones, the government argued in a brief that it would be unconstitutional to block funds from being used for religious schools. Several civil-liberties groups have argued that publicly financing church-affiliated schools would violate a state ban on using taxpayer dollars to support religious institutions.
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complete article here

[Maat]

1. Proud member of, and monthly donor to, AU.

That's Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

The radical religious right members are HUGELY hypocritical.

For example, they offer up bills that preclude orgs such as the ACLU from collecting court fees when they initiate Establishment Clause cases (e.g. the violation of the Est. Clause that the Mt. Soledad Cross represents); however, the RRR lawyers are quick to collect fees when they win any case about equal access of religious clubs to public campuses, for example.

Al Gonzales, the BFEE Enabler, is a whore for the RRR (Radical Religious Right) yet again!