I’ve managed to get on a couple of, um, conservative email lists, so it’s interesting to see what gets tossed over the transom. This one came Don Wildmon’s AFA:
A call to action from former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and U.S. Senator Jim DeMint to stop ACLU supported bill
Democrats vote to discriminate against Christians and people of faith
Oh, don’t be silly, guys. DeMint’s a jerk, but Gingrich is just playing political games here. Note, by the way, the clever “hot button” dropping of the ACLU’s name.
Dear Dave,
Nice to be addressed so familiarly. (Not limited to Right-wing political mailings, of course.)
President Obama’s stimulus bill discriminates against Christians and people of faith. The stimulus bans universities and colleges from using funds to renovate buildings where students engage in “religious worship.”
U.S. Senator Jim DeMint made the following statement after Democrats voted 43-54 against his amendment to strike from the economic stimulus bill language that discriminates against people of faith. Senator DeMint’s amendment would have eliminated a provision that bans any university or college receiving restoration funds, from allowing “sectarian instruction” or “religious worship” within the facility. This would in effect bar use of campus buildings for groups like Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Campus Crusade for Christ, Catholic Student Ministries, Hillel and other religious organizations.
Wow, that sounds pretty dire? Is it true? (No, it isn’t. See below.)
“This is a direct attack on students of faith, and I’m outraged Democrats are using an economic stimulus bill to promote discrimination,” said Sen. DeMint. “Democrats should be ashamed of themselves for siding with the ACLU over millions of students of faith. These students simply want equal access to public facilities, which is their constitutional right. This hostility toward religion must end. Those who voted for this discrimination are standing in the schoolhouse door to keep people of faith from entering any campus building renovated by this bill.
Next thing you know, it’s Scarlet Crosses on their school uniforms and everything! The horror! And … look, other gratuitous ACLU slam!
“This is now an ACLU stimulus designed to trigger lawsuits designed to intimidate religious organizations across the nation. This language is so vague, it’s not clear if students can even pray in a dorm room renovated with this funding since that is a form of ‘religious worship.’ If this provision remains in the bill, it will have a chilling effect on students of faith in America” he continued.
No prayer in dorms! Eek! Next think you know, the ACLU (again!) will be installing CCTV in all dorm rooms to make sure that nobody’s praying in there! That’s just the sort of thing they’d do, those organized disregarders of human rights!
“Our culture cannot survive without faith and our nation cannot survive without freedom. This provision is an assault against both. It’s un-American and it’s unconstitutional. Intolerant and it’s intolerable.”
Note it’s only when their freedom ox is gored that this contingent cries about how it’s un-American and unconstitutional. The rest of the time they’re busy talking about “our Christian nation” and “people who nitpick over fringe interpretations of the Constitution.”
This funding restriction is unconstitutional. In the 2001 Good News Club v. Milford Central School Supreme Court decision, the court ruled that restricting religious speech within the context of public shared-use facilities (or schools) is unconstitutional.
Though the ACLU (since we’ve dragged them into this) filed an amicus brief in favor of the school, its concerns were not with the the presence of “religious speech within the context of public shared-use facilities (or schools)” — indeed, the brief notes that they’d favored not restricting such speech in the Lamb’s Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District case (1993) — but over issues as to when such speech arrangements become tantamount to the public facility actually endorsing such speech.
Pages 164-165 of the stimulus contain the following prohibitions on the use of $3.5 billion available for renovation of public or private college and university facilities.
(2) PROHIBITED USES OF FUNDS. No funds awarded under this section may be used for – (C) modernization, renovation, or repair of facilities (i) used for sectarian instruction, religious worship, or a school or department of divinity; or (ii) in which a substantial portion of the functions of the facilities are subsumed in a religious mission; or construction of new facilities.
Former Speaker Newt Gingrich urges Christian activists and other conservatives to e-mail and call their representative and senators demanding that the language discriminating against people of faith be removed.
Aha! We actually see the text involved here and … it doesn’t say anything like what it’s being accused of. Instead, it basically says you can’t spend Federal bail-out money to work on church schools, churches, or buildings for religious higher education — or on buildings which are largely used for religious missions. It also says you can’t build any new facilities with the money (religious or not).
Nothing about preventing Hillel from meeting in a classroom after hours, or the Campus Crusade for Christ gathering at the student coop conference room, or even the Christian Rainbow Coalition having a meeting in someone’s dorm room. Unless those rooms, or buildings, are purposed toward religious groups, worship, etc., in which case, yeah, I suspect the AFA would rather not pay federal tax dollars for roof repairs on the Wicca Wig-wam, or new air conditioning at the local madras.
[…] Christians have not expressed enough outrage focused on the concept that people of faith are being taken advantage of by the stimulus bill during a time of crisis. They are being stolen from them when they are down and out and looking in good faith to the government for help. Instead of the stimulus we need, the liberals are getting the pork that they want — for themselves, their families, and their friends. They are pickpockets and thieves preying on the down and out.
Right. The only people “down and out and looking in good faith to the government for help” are all good, Christian, “people of faith.” No liberals (who I guess are the opposite of “people of faith” according to the AFA) are suffering; they’re all “pickpockets and thieves.” Nice.
Etc., etc., please write your senators and send us money. Of course.
Looking at the passage in broader context shows that it also prohibits spending money on college athletic facilities, auditoriums, and theaters (“modernization, renovation, or repair of stadiums or other facilities primarily used for athletic contests or exhibitions or other events for which admission is charged to the general public”). Clearly part of the Liberal War on Sports and Theater, too. And clearly that will have a chilling effect on colleges, such that students who toss around a football on the Quad will be at risk of expulsion lest the school lose all it’s federal moolah.
It’s not even like this is some unique formulation that was stuffed in here as a new, covert way to kick off the Obama-bin-Ladin War on Christians. It’s practically boilerplate text for federal spending bills.
Funds appropriated under a certain higher education grant program “may not be used…for a school or department of divinity or any religious worship or sectarian activity”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode20/usc_sec_20_00001068—e000-.htmlFunds appropriated under another program “may not be used…for a school or department of divinity or any religious worship or sectarian activity”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode20/usc_sec_20_00001103—e000-.htmlLimitation contained in program to help historically black institutions: “No grant may be made under this chapter for any educational program, activity, or service related to sectarian instruction or religious worship, or provided by a school or department of divinity.”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode20/usc_sec_20_00001062—-000-.htmlGrants for work-study programs may “not involve the construction, operation, or maintenance of so much of any facility as is used or is to be used for sectarian instruction or as a place for religious worship”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode42/usc_sec_42_00002753—-000-.htmlMoney used under a specific community development program subject to limitation that “no participant will be employed on projects involving political parties, or the construction, operation, or maintenance of so much of any facility as is used or to be used for sectarian instruction or as a place for religious worship”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode42/usc_sec_42_00009807—-000-.htmlAid under program providing grants for volunteer service projects may not be used for ”projects involving the construction, operation, or maintenance of so much of any facility used or to be used for sectarian instruction or as a place for religious worship.”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode42/usc_sec_42_00005001—-000-.htmlNo energy resource graduate fellowships “shall be awarded under this subchapter for study at a school or department of divinity.”
uscode/html/uscode30/usc_sec_30_00001325—-000-.htmlReligious organizations participating in the “Community Schools Youth Services and Supervision Grant Program Act of 1994″ “shall not provide any sectarian instruction or sectarian worship in connection with an activity funded under this subchapter.”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode42/usc_sec_42_00013791—-000-.htmlFunds used under grant program for tribally controlled schools “shall not be used in connection with religious worship or sectarian instruction.”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode25/usc_sec_25_00001803—-000-.htmlAnother construction program: “Participants shall not be employed under this chapter to carry out the construction, operation, or maintenance of any part of any facility that is used or to be used for sectarian instruction or as a place for religious worship (except with respect to the maintenance of a facility that is not primarily or inherently devoted to sectarian instruction or religious worship, in a case in which the organization operating the facility is part of a program or activity providing services to participants).”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode29/usc_sec_29_00002938—-000-.html
And that’s because I don’t particularly feel that religious schools or religious groups and buildings within other schools need or should get my federal tax dollars. Heck, that sounds like a positively conservative statement, or at least old-school (so to speak) conservative.
What chaps my hide on this is that it’s not even trying to argue the economic merits of the stimulus. Instead, it’s just rampant fear-mongering and public-point-making, trying to make the Democrats and the president look like they’re about to pass laws tossing Christians to the lions next, when in reality it’s simply Just. Not. So. It’s either delusions from ignorant fear, or lying for political gain. I’ll let you decide.
The religious right really hate the ALCU, don’t they. I presume the Dominionists see them as an obstacle to the theocracy they dream of creating.
I’ve never actually been a “card-carrying member of the ACLU” — but it’s crap like this that really tempts me.
I honestly only glanced over your comments regarding the email going around. Wow. I thought there was disdain in the language of the email until I read your own comments.
I always find it amusing how when there’s a “time of need” or resources needed in a community, government, all the way down to local will cry out for help from churches and programs they might have.
and there’s people like you who will rip on them.
I have no problems with what churches do for the community. I belong to a church, and we do a lot of outreach and helping, especially during difficult times.
But that doesn’t mean I think anyone — the Jewish folks down the street, the atheist guy I exchange email with, my Catholic parents, heck, even other Episcopalians — should be forking over their federal tax dollars to maintain the roof of my parish church, or repave the parking lot, or help us expand our facility.
And I don’t feel that someone else who thinks the same way is discriminating against my religious faith.
Note, incidentally, that this provision in the stimulus package has nothing to do with local churches. It is about institutions of higher education getting grant money, and what they can or can’t spend it on. They can’t build new stadiums. They can’t expand the campus chapel. Etc. I think those are all quite proper restrictions.
If I use hyperbole in expressing my disdain for the AFA message, it’s because I think it’s either dishonest (by distorting what’s being proposed) or hyperbolic itself. Plus it shows a poor understanding of the First Amendment.