| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"johac" |
| Date: |
02 Mar 2007 12:47:18 AM |
| Object: |
Hypocrisy Seen In New Religious Freedom Initiative |
In BushCo World, freedom of religion means freedom to practice their
religion.
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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.
The Justice Department similarly intervened in a lawsuit against the
Salvation Army's hiring policies for government-funded positions.
Government attorneys filed a brief affirming the Christian charity's
power to "preserve its character and identity as a religious
organization" by hiring people based on religion, provided that the
taxpayer-funded work was "secular in nature."
Americans United spokesperson Rob Boston said the administration's
claimed victories for religious freedom reveal a tendency "to intervene
in certain situations mainly to appease the Religious Right." He added
that the report may be ignoring other perspectives that complicate the
discrimination issue such as job applicants rejected because of their
beliefs in the Salvation Army case, or people who feel that religion is
being imposed on them when worship is promoted in public spaces.
Americans United, as well as religious leaders who advocate for strong
church-state separation, say the First Freedom Project folds into a
broader agenda of mingling faith with politics. The White House's
promotion of "faith-based initiatives," for example, has drawn criticism
for dramatically expanding government funding for charity programs run
by churches and other religious groups.
In a statement responding to the launch of the initiative, Reverend
Brent Walker, director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious
Liberty, accused the administration of "supporting attempts of
governments to endorse a religious message." Walker argued, "Religious
liberty is most secure when government stays neutral toward religion."
Some critics point to evidence that the administration itself has
actively impinged on religious freedom by targeting Muslims in supposed
anti-terrorism campaigns.
The report does document various government actions against anti-Muslim
discrimination. For instance, the government sided with sixth-grader
Nashala Hearn, who sued her Oklahoma school for preventing her from
wearing a religious head covering in 2003.
But Boston of Americans United said the Justice Department is ignoring
its own role in promoting more systematic discrimination.
Referring to controversial post-9/11 law-enforcement tactics like
tracking Muslims through "special registration" surveillance programs
Boston said, "When they're engaging in religious profiling, it does
raise the question of whether there are more serious issues of religious
discrimination that are not being addressed instead of just the right
of a girl in Oklahoma to wear a head scarf."
Ibrahim Hooper, with the national advocacy group Council on
American-Islamic Relations, said that "on strictly religious matters,"
the government has responded well to the Muslim community's complaints
of local discrimination. But he told TNS the administration has been
less willing to tackle "areas of religious rights as they overlap with
civil liberties and political discourse."
More complex bias issues arise, Hooper noted, "when Muslims are engaged
in political activism, political empowerment, social activism that
don't necessarily have much to do with theology or religious practice."
As previously reported by TNS, the Justice Department has spearheaded
investigations of Muslims involved in charity and antiwar activities.
"Maybe the strictly religious field is easier to deal with; everybody
can agree that everyone should have freedom to practice their faith,"
Hooper said. "Maybe it's more difficult to agree on having political
dissent."
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http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/4406
--
John Hachmann aa #1782
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
-Voltaire
Contact - Throw a .net over the .com
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