Florida Shows Why Public Funds Should Not Go to Religious Schools

Roughly 38 states have constitutional provisions that bar the use of public, taxpayer funds to support religious schools.  As Florida's voucher system is demonstrating, such bans are appropriate and that taxpayer funds should not support religious and private schools that actively discriminate against different portions of the public. As noted in a prior post, Christofascists now have cases before the U.S. Supreme Court where they want such bans abolished in order for their discriminatory schools take money from the public trough while openly discriminating against whoever they deem"other" or "sinners."  The Orlando Sentinel looks at Florida's voucher system and the bigotry the public is being forced to finance.  It is instructive to keep in mind that in the South, many "christian academies" began to avoid integration and that the bigoted mindset continues to this day. Here are article highlights:

Once again, Orlando Sentinel reporters peered behind the curtains of Florida’s unchecked voucher-school system to see how $1 billion worth of public money is being used. And once again, what they found was ugly.

Their reporting uncovered more than 80 schools with blatant discrimination policies that deny admission to gay children, expel or discipline students who reveal they’re gay and sometimes refuse to educate children of LGBT parents.

These schools want public money. But they don’t want to serve all of the public.

One school told a mother — a firefighter married to U.S. Air Force veteran — that her children were unfit to be educated there simply because the couple was two women.
The two women served their country and community. But the school — which received $371,000 in state scholarship money last year — told the family to get an education elsewhere.

In their “Schools without Rules” series, reporters found voucher schools forging safety reports, using factually incorrect curriculum and hiring unqualified teachers — some who hadn’t even finished high school.

Yes, high school dropouts teaching school … underwritten with public money.

They found voucher schools that stiffed teachers out of paychecks and some that shut down in the middle of the school year, stranding students.

Berate public schools all you want. There will never be a day when you take your child to a public school only to find it’s gone out of business.

The reporters found administrators accused of fraud, teachers accused of abuse, loads of problems — all of it swept under the rug by politicians who demonize public schools while promoting “school choice.”

These reporters wanted to see what was happening in Florida’s billion-dollar voucher-school system for a simple reason: No one else will.

In six months, our reporters visited more voucher schools in Central Florida — to see what kids were learning and how they were being treated — than the Florida Department of Education visited in the entire state in a year.

Some voucher schools do great jobs. And many welcome all children, regardless of race, faith or sexual orientation. This includes some Christian and faith-based schools that not only welcome LGBT students but teach students that discrimination against anyone is wrong.

But others discriminate — not only against LGBT students, but also students with even mild disabilities.

If these kids were denied admission because they were black, it would be illegal — and politicians would be outraged.

But Florida green-lights discrimination against LGBT citizens. In hiring. In housing. And yes, in schooling.

The politicians also say people of faith should be free to discriminate if that’s part of their belief system. People used to make similar arguments for racial discrimination. In defending a 1965 ban on interracial marriage, a Virginia judge declared in 1965 that God “did not intend for the races to mix.”

Discrimination was wrong then. It is wrong now. It’s especially wrong when underwritten with tax dollars.

[S]ix months of investigating by reporters Annie Martin and Leslie Postal revealed, is that many more schools have explicit discrimination policies. And they should welcome more accountability and standards in general, to make sure children are actually being educated at these publicly funded schools — just as Florida already demands of traditional schools.

Many lawmakers are fine with the status quo and publicly funded discrimination. If you’re not, speak up.

Diverting Taxpayer Funds to Religious Schools is Wrong

It has long been the goal of religious schools to divert public tax dollars to support private sectarian schools many of which discriminate against gays and those belonging to other denominations or faiths. The Trump/Pence regime, eager to sustain the loyalty of Christofascist voters supports this diversion of public monies to discriminatory religious schools.  A case before the U.S. Supreme Court, if decided wrongly could open the flood gates for taxpayer funds flowing to such schools while allowing such schools to openly discriminate against an array of students and/or parents.  Such a ruling would clearly violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, yet the "conservative" majority on the Court may well be happy to allow taxpayer funded discrimination.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this dangerous situation.  Here are highlights:

Imagine a country where your hard-earned tax dollars must fund private religious schools that require students to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, or that expel students for being gay. Imagine that your state is forced to spend resources to help fund construction of a local house of worship of a faith you do not share, just because the state is also contributing to building a community center.

These scenarios are antithetical to the principles of religious freedom on which our nation was founded. And yet, this is the path we may be headed down as the U.S. Supreme Court gears up to hear oral arguments Wednesday in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue.

The case arises out of a challenge to a Montana private-school voucher program. Because the Montana Constitution — like three-quarters of the states’ constitutions — specifically prohibits state dollars from funding religious education, the state limited its voucher program to secular schools. But some parents argued that if Montana funds private education at all, it must fund religious education. The Montana Supreme Court struck down the entire voucher program, resulting in all private schools being treated the same way: None of them get taxpayer dollars.

Now, however, the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to decide whether Montana’s earlier decision to fund some secular schools means that it must also fund religious schools — schools that teach religion, compel students to engage in religious activities and enforce religious codes of conduct. This case is not about what a state may do, but about what it must do. To hold that the U.S. Constitution requires taxpayers to fund religious education in this fashion would upset long-standing principles of religious freedom and separation of religion and government.

No taxpayer should be forced to fund religious education. . . . Private religious schools don’t adhere to the same nondiscrimination laws that public schools do. As a result, we have seen them turn students away because their families don’t share the school’s religious beliefs. They have barred admission because a student or parent is LGBTQ or a student has a disability. They have expelled students who engage in sex outside marriage. . . . . While not all private religious schools conduct themselves in this way, too many do, and taxpayers should not have to underwrite such discrimination.

Those challenging the Montana Constitution are not seeking a level playing field. Instead, they are asking the state to fund their religious schools and continue to extend to them exemptions from laws that apply to public and even secular private schools. That is not equal treatment — it’s religious privilege.

The Christofascists continue to demand special rights and the ability to discriminate at will - even when receiving taxpayer funds.  They are a clear and present danger to constitutional government. 

Did Trump Appoint a Raging Homophobe to an Advisory Council?

The Trump/Pence regime has had an open door policy toward some of the most extreme homophobes and Christofascists, some of whom claim to be on a "Faith Advisory Council."  Some of these individuals include Tony Perkins of Family Research Council who has documented white supremacist ties (and who boasts of his access to Trump), and noted "Christian" grifters Franklin Graham and Jerry Fallwell, Jr., each of whom routinely use religion and preying on the gullible to enrich themselves. Now, Tim Wildmon of American Family Association ("AFA"), perhaps one of the most rabid anti-gay organizations of them all which routinely disseminates off the charts outright lies and falsehoods (hence a perfect fit with Trump) claims to have been appointed to this Council.  Perhaps embarrassed by Wildmon's off the charts lunacy, the White House is denying that Wildmon received any such appointment and the that the Council exists. A piece in The Advocate looks at the competing claims.  Here are excerpts: 

Tim Wildmon, president of the virulently anti-LGBTQ American Family Association, announced Monday that he had been named to Donald Trump’s Faith Advisory Council — but on Wednesday, a White House spokesman said there had been no such appointment, nor is there any such council.

“I have no idea what he’s talking about,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere told the Washington Blade. “There is no such thing as a White House Faith Council or Advisory Board. There is a Faith & Opportunity Initiative led by an adviser, Pastor Paula White, but it does not include a council or advisory board.”

But the AFA had sent out a press release Monday saying Wildmon had joined the body, which it said is “made up of key leaders who support and help guide the president’s faith-based initiatives, give insight on policy important to evangelicals and, most importantly, pray for the president.” It said other members of the council include White and such well-known Christian right figures as Tony Perkins, Robert Jeffress, and Jerry Falwell Jr., all of whom have worked with Trump on various projects. . . . The press release is still posted on the AFA’s website.

The AFA, based in Tupelo, Miss., is classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a progressive watchdog organization, as a hate group because of the dangerous misinformation it spreads about LGBTQ people. It considers homosexuality a sin, as many religions do, but it seeks to infuse public policy with that belief. It is also deeply transphobic, having often portrayed transgender people as predatory, and antichoice, with a recent blog post saying billionaire philanthropist Warren Buffett is going to hell because of his support for reproductive rights.

Bryan Fischer, who hosts a radio show for the AFA and blogs on its website, is one of the most hateful commentators in the nation, demonizing LGBTQ people, feminists, Mormons, Muslims, and many other groups. He recently wrote that when the Hallmark Channel agreed to re-air a wedding planner’s ads featuring a lesbian couple, it was caving to the “gay gestapo.” One Million Moms, an AFA offshoot, was one of the groups that had campaigned against the ads.

The Blade sought comment from the AFA on the conflicting reports about Wildmon’s appointment but has so far not received anything. The Advocate has put in its own request for comment with the AFA’s public relations representative, Hamilton Strategies, but also has not received a response.

The Founders Would Be Revolted By Trump, Today’s Republicans

As perhaps a majority of Republicans continue to gush about Donald Trump's Soviet-style parade and military display on July 4th and his regime's human rights abuses continue on the nation's southern border, those who know accurate history of America are revolted by what they have witnessed - many of us refused to tune in - and are struck by just disgusted the Founding Fathers would be.  Significant portions of Republicans now support government censorship of the free press while a majority believe that Christianity should be made the nation's established religion.  Anyone versed in accurate history of the nation understands that these views were anathema to the Founding Fathers. A column in the New York Times looks at the increasingly anti-American positions of today's Republicans, not mention Der Trumpenführer.  Here are column highlights:

Kids in cages and tanks for the tyrant. After that dictator-friendly Fourth of July, it’s time for all true patriots to conduct a political gut check.

Like many people, I’m worried about the Democrats. A majority of Americans are desperate for someone to dislodge the despot from the White House. And yet some Democrats are pushing policy positions — such as taking away private health insurance from more than 150 million people — that are deeply unpopular. The smarter candidates will rethink this, and soon, or otherwise ensure that an awful American aberration is more than a one-off.

But as troubled as I am by the Democrats, I’m terrified of the Republicans. In numerous surveys of a party that has adopted the worst pathologies of President Trump, Republicans have shown themselves to be explicitly anti-American. The Founders would gag. So would Abraham Lincoln.

Consider the Republicans’ view of the First Amendment, the most sacred of the freedoms embedded in this country’s governing blueprint. Just under half of Republicans now believe government should be able to shut down “biased or inaccurate media.” And close to half of Republicans have adopted Trump’s authoritarian view that the news media is “the enemy of the people.”

I don’t expect Republicans to know Thomas Jefferson’s words by heart — that if he were forced to choose between “a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” This from a man who was subject to a lifetime of biased and inaccurate press.

But what part of “Congress shall make no law” abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, do these citizens not understand?

Regarding the other foundational liberty in the First Amendment, restricting an “establishment of religion” by the state, the cult of Trump would throw that under a steamroller of bigotry as well.

A majority of Republicans think Christianity should be the established national religion. And half of all Southerners — the deepest, most anti-American part of Trump’s base, with the DNA of Civil War traitors still coursing through the region — believe the United States was founded as an “explicitly Christian” nation.

George Washington made clear it was otherwise in a letter to a Jewish congregation in 1790 celebrating religious tolerance and diversity. “The citizens of the United States have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy,” he wrote.

Jefferson expressed a similar feeling, touting a homeland for “the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.”

So, quick summary: Republicans of today would not approve of the First Amendment as written. They would give Big Government free rein to quash dissenting voices in the press, and would prefer a merging of church and state.

[A]s they have picked up Trump’s hatreds as their own, Republicans have turned a cold shoulder to the wretched masses yearning to breathe free. Less than 40 percent of Republicans, in three recent polls, now believe immigrants are a benefit to the country. This could be because of ignorance: Even though the vast majority, 77 percent, of immigrants in this country are legal, a plurality of Republicans believe they are not.

Trump has compared himself to Abraham Lincoln, which is like comparing a noxious weed to a redwood tree.

The modern-day Know-Nothings are the pink-faced mobs calling for a wall at Trump rallies. They are the architects of a government policy that puts children in filthy cages and forces them to drink fetid water, that sees helpless and newly orphaned babies as subhuman — all while laughing at the cruelty.

You can see why Republicans with a sense of history and fealty to the great sweep of their party’s finer principles describe themselves as politically homeless in 2019.

And when Trump rolls out weapons of war to celebrate the birth of a nation that never even had much of a standing army until the 20th century, you can see why passionate pride in this country is at its lowest point since Gallup started measuring this sentiment in the modern era.

Democracy is not mentioned in the Constitution nor in the Declaration of Independence, as the historian Virginia Anderson recently noted. It’s a human construct, more fragile than any of us believed until now. But when it’s gone, no one should be surprised.

A piece in The Atlantic continues this theme by looking at Trump's so-called speech at his Red Square like event.  Here are excerpts:

Were these wars right or just? Why were they fought? What were their outcomes? Except for the mentions of “freedoms” sprinkled randomly through the text, those questions went unconsidered. Instead, Trump would periodically ad-lib “What a great country!” after this or that mention of power and violence. America is great because it crushes all before it. Altering for circumstances, it was a speech that could have been given by Kaiser Wilhelm or Napoleon or Julius Caesar or the Assyrian Emperor Sennacherib. A great country is one that is feared by its enemies, that can inflict more devastating destruction than any other.

Devotion. Unity. History. Fighting. But not: Democracy. Justice. Individuality. Peace.

From time to time, one of Trump’s more devout speechwriters will try to insert references to God into the president’s mouth. Those references never sound natural from the least spiritual president in the nation’s history. They were, fascinatingly, all but absent from this speech commemorating the independence of a nation, in the apt phrase of G. K. Chesterton, with the soul of a church. Instead, there was only vainglorious boasting: See our wealth, see our power, see our glorious triumphs over the mounded corpses of our enemies. We will always win, because we always fight.

No non-American could watch that spectacle at the Lincoln Memorial and feel that America stood for anything good or right or universal. Power worshipped power, for its own sake.

“We will always be the people who defeated a tyrant, crossed a continent, harnessed science, took to the skies, and soared into the heavens because we will never forget that we are Americans and the future belongs to us.” That sentence of self-congratulation toward the end of Trump’s speech was probably lodged in the clipboard memory of some 1980s vintage word processor hauled from the Executive Office Building.

It’s bumpf, a thousand times typed, a thousand times said. And yet this July 4, after all the rodomontade that preceded it, I found myself paying attention to those hackneyed words in a way I never had before. Will Americans always be that people? Are Americans that people now?

Be very, very afraid.

Karen and Mike Pence's Anti-Gay Animus Puts Them Far Outside the Mainstream

Click image to read sign in background.

Mike Pence has delusions of being president, yet the anti-gay views of he and his wife place them far outside the main stream of American opinion.  Indeed, the only evangelical Christians - who have demonstrated to the rest of the country their complete moral bankruptcy by steadfastly supporting Donald Trump - seemingly share their anti-gay animus.  As CNN notes in referencing a Pew Research survey, two-thirds of Americans said gay or lesbian relationships are morally acceptable.  The third of the population who share anti-gay beliefs equates to almost the same percentage of the population that supports Trump.  If Pence dreams of the White House, he needs to stop clinging to and loudly supporting views rejected by a strong majority of Americans.   Here are highlights from CNN:  

Second lady Karen Pence has taken a job as an art teacher at a Christian school in Northern Virginia that bans gay students, parents, and employees.

The policy places the school on the other side of US public opinion; recent polling on the issue suggests most people don't see the homosexuality as immoral or even as an issue of morality.

According to a Pew poll from May 2018, two-thirds of Americans said gay or lesbian relationships are morally acceptable and only 30% said they are morally wrong. This was the highest number to say gay or lesbian relationships are morally acceptable since Gallup began tracking the question in 2001.
 Pew's findings that homosexuality isn't controversial are backed up by a Gallup poll from December 2017. While fewer overall said homosexuality was either morally acceptable (22%) or morally wrong (34%), that's because they offered a third option: not a moral issue. When offered the third option, 44% said that homosexual behavior wasn't a moral issue.
 And most people don't want religion to dictate government policies on LGBT issues, from an AP-NORC survey in August, 2018. Almost half of all respondents said they thought religion should have no influence at all on government policies. A third said it should have a lot or some influence and 16% said it should have "not much."
 In a May, 2018 Gallup poll, 67% of Americans said that marriages between same-sex couples should be recognized by the law as valid and have the same rights as other marriages.

Note: half of Americans want religion to have no influence on government policies.  As Millennials become more politically engaged, expect Mike Pence's anti-gay bigotry to become even a bigger political liability.  

Trump Is Tearing Down the Wall Between Church and State

As a gay American, once I overcame the brainwashing of my Catholic upbringing, I have come to increasingly view religion as one of the great forces for hate, division, and bloodshed throughout history.  For instance, both Christianity and Islam claim to be peaceful religions, yet the Bible and Koran can be cherry picked to find justification for almost unlimited evils, including war and the persecution of others of other faiths or non-believers in general.  Works of charity more often than not are outweighed by horrors, especially when viewed with the lens of history. This toxicity becomes even worse when religion intertwines itself with government for the purposes of forging a dogma based political agenda or seeking taxpayer support even as the theocrats rail and discriminate against segments of the taxpaying public.  Thomas Jefferson described such forced financial support "sinful and tyrannical."  Despite these realities and founding principles, the Trump/Pence regime is striving to destroy the concept of separation of church and state and merge government policy with the dogma of right wing Christian extremists.  A column in the New York Times looks at this disturbing phenomenon.  Here are excerpts: 

Many Americans were shocked when Attorney General Jeff Sessions turned to the Bible — specifically, Paul’s epistle to the Romans — to justify President Trump’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents. This scriptural justification for a political decision should not have surprised anyone, because Mr. Trump’s administration has consistently treated the separation of church and state as a form of heresy rather than a cherished American value.

Attacks on the wall of separation established by the founders — which the religious right likes to call “a lie of the left” — are nothing new. What has changed under Mr. Trump is the disproportionate political debt he owes to extreme religious conservatives, whose views on church-state issues — ranging from the importance of secular public education to women’s and gay rights — are far removed from the American mainstream.

The very meaning of the phrases “religious liberty” and “religious freedom” . . . . is being altered to mean that government should foster a closer relationship with those who want to mix their Christian faith with taxpayer dollars. This usage can be found in numerous executive orders and speeches by Mr. Trump and his cabinet members. Changes in language have consequences, as the religious right’s successful substitution of “pro-life” for “anti-abortion” has long demonstrated.

[T]he Supreme Court upheld Mr. Trump’s travel ban targeting majority-Muslim countries and struck down a California requirement that anti-abortion, state-licensed pregnancy clinics provide notice to their clients that abortion is an option. These significant rulings were immediately overshadowed by the retirement from the court of the frequent swing voter Anthony M. Kennedy, which now gives Mr. Trump the opportunity to nominate a predictable religious conservative who would most likely support the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

While it is impossible to overstate the long-term importance of the next court appointment, Mr. Sessions and many of his fellow cabinet members offer textbook examples of the everyday perils of entangling religion with politics.

Many pro-immigration religious leaders, including Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims, took umbrage at the biblical justification for a policy that could hardly be described as loving. Their objections, however, were based mainly on the idea that Mr. Sessions had picked the wrong verse.

It was left to secular organizations to identify all religious rationalizations as the fundamental problem. The Center for Inquiry, a secular think tank, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, on whose honorary boards I serve, issued strong condemnations — as did the Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Rachel Laser, president of Americans United, put it succinctly: “The separation of church and state means that we don’t base public policy on the Bible or any religious book.”

And yet Trump administration officials have used fundamentalist biblical interpretations to support everything from environmental deregulation to tax cuts.

Many evangelical Christians do not share such theocratic fantasies. These evangelicals, like former President Jimmy Carter, are spiritual descendants of Roger Williams, who was banished from the Puritan theocracy of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and founded the first Baptist congregation in colonial America. Williams is also credited as the first person to use the phrase “wall of separation,” in a 1644 response to the theocratic Puritan clergyman John Cotton. . . . Thomas Jefferson used the expression in a famous 1802 letter to a Baptist congregation in Danbury, Conn.

Destructive religious wars in 17th-century Europe, among other factors, had led many Americans to the realization that governments could indeed be threatened by a close identification with religion.

Trump’s appointees seem unconcerned about whether statements praising the godliness of mixing religion and politics will offend secular and many religious Americans.

Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development and a devout Seventh-day Adventist, has described commitment to the separation of church and state as “crap,” prompted by “political correctness.”

Mr. Sessions took on a larger mission last fall when he sent a 25-page memo on “protections for religious liberty” to every federal agency. It warned that government “may not exclude religious organizations as such from secular aid programs, . . .

Last but not least is Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Ms. DeVos, raised as a strict Calvinist, has devoted much of her life to promoting private and religious schools over public education. . . . In May, Ms. DeVos visited New York City, which has the largest public school system in the country. She did not inspect a single public school. Instead, she stopped by two Orthodox Jewish schools and spoke at a fund-raiser where she was introduced by Cardinal Timothy Michael Dolan. In her speech, she expressed support for tax credits to help pay tuition for private schools.

Regular Americans who ignore this creeping Christofascism at their own risk.  While one may not be gay, non-Christian or seeking an abortion, over time, the Christofascist want to outlaw even things like simple contraception.  With a second Trump appointee on the Supreme Court, the right to personal privacy first enunciated in Griswold v. Connecticut  could even be overturned. 

It's Official: Ireland's Stinging Rebuke to Catholic Church

To me, Ireland should be a case study for Republicans and their Christofascist base of what eventually happens when a minority tries to force its antiquated and hypocrisy soaked religious beliefs on all of society.  With the vote in Ireland official, two-thirds of the citizenry voted to end a near total ban on abortions spearheaded by the Catholic Church in 1983.  The Trump/Pence regime would do well to realize that their agenda of appeasing Christofascists will not end well in the long run despite the presence of right wingers like Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court.  Here in America, the sex abuse scandal of priestly sexual predators continues with almost daily stories somewhere in the country (In Australia a high cleric was recently criminally convicted for his role in covering up abuse).  Meanwhile, we see an almost daily stream of evangelical pastors caught up in sexual scandals as evangelicals show themselves to be the most hate-filled and hypocrisy drenched individuals in society as them support an occupant of the White House devoid of any shred of morality or decency.  The New York Times looks at the stunning rebuke in Ireland:

DUBLIN — Ireland voted decisively to repeal one of the world’s more restrictive abortion bans, sweeping aside generations of conservative patriarchy and dealing the latest in a series of stinging rebukes to the Roman Catholic Church.

The surprising landslide, reflected in the results announced on Saturday, cemented the nation’s liberal shift at a time when right-wing populism is on the rise in Europe and the Trump administration is imposing curbs on abortion rights in the United States. In the past three years alone, Ireland has installed a gay man as prime minister and has voted in another referendum to allow same-sex marriage.

The “yes” camp took more than 66 percent of the vote, according to the official tally, and turnout was about 64 percent.

The outcome signaled the end of an era in which thousands of women each year had been forced either to travel abroad or to buy pills illegally online to terminate their pregnancies, risking a 14-year jail sentence. The government has said that general practitioners — doctors who are the first port of call for patients — will be asked to provide abortions, although they will still be allowed to conscientiously object to termination at their clinics.

The vote followed months of soul-searching in a country where the legacy of the Catholic Church remains powerful. It was the latest, and harshest, in a string of rejections of the church’s authority in recent years.

The church lost much of its credibility in the wake of scandals involving pedophile priests and thousands of unwed mothers who were placed into servitude in so-called Magdalene laundries or mental asylums as recently as the mid-1990s.

“This is devastating for the Roman Catholic hierarchy,” said Gail McElroy, professor of politics at Trinity College Dublin. “It is the final nail in the coffin for them. They’re no longer the pillar of society, and their hopes of re-establishing themselves are gone.”

That shift in attitude was driven in part by prominent cases, such as the 2012 death of Savita Halappanavar, who had asked for a termination of her pregnancy but later died of complications from a septic miscarriage. Ms. Halappanavar’s face was printed on placards supporting abortion, and on Saturday morning people placed flowers in front of a mural of her face in Dublin.

Ireland “is taking the proper steps to separate church and state and to move forward as a more progressive country,” said Conor Flynn, a 22-year-old student.

Church and state need to be totally separate and in America, progressives and truly moral people must continue to strive to destroy the power of the Christofascists and their political whores. 

Paul Ryan Wants Priests to Shut Up About the Poor

I have noted in numerous post how Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House of Representatives claims to be a "devout Catholic" even as the reverse Robin Hood agenda he has pushed for years is diametrically opposed to the Catholic Church's social gospel which makes helping the poor, the hungry, the homeless and the sick a priority.  Ryan's policies, indeed, seek to kick those very categories of people into the gutter while lavishing tax cuts on the obscenely wealthy.  Ryan's hypocrisy is  on a par with that of evangelicals who want to police the sex lives of others yet support a morally bankrupt and confessed sexual predator that occupies the White House.  Now, with the firing of House chaplain, Jesuit priest, for lamenting the misplaced priorities of the Republican majority has put Ryan's hypocrisy on glaring display (while also raising the issue of the impropriety of having congressional chaplains in the first place).  A column in Esquire looks at Ryan's behavior.  Here are highlights:    

Right around 1817, after his term as president and having retired to the family homestead at Montpelier in Virginia, James Madison, who never stopped thinking about things, jotted down some further thoughts on one of his favorite subjects—the danger of mixing religious faith and secular, godless politics. He was pretty clear about where he stood. He was opposed even to the idea of congressional chaplains:

The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them; and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does not this involve the principle of a national establishment . . . . The establishment of the chaplainship to Congs is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles: The tenets of the chaplains elected [by the majority] shut the door of worship agst the members whose creeds & consciences forbid a participation in that of the majority.

[R]ecent events have added a third reason for not having congressional chaplains. Because, one day, a zombie-eyed granny starver might become Speaker of the House and fire a chaplain for being insufficiently devout as regards the theological basis for sacred tax cuts. From The New York Times:

Though Father Conroy said he did not know whether politics were behind his departure, he pointed to a prayer he had given on the House floor in November, when Congress was debating tax overhaul legislation.

“May all members be mindful that the institutions and structures of our great nation guarantee the opportunities that have allowed some to achieve great success, while others continue to struggle,” he prayed. “May their efforts these days guarantee that there are not winners and losers under new tax laws, but benefits balanced and shared by all Americans.”

About a week later, Father Conroy said, he heard from the speaker’s office. “A staffer came down and said, We are upset with this prayer; you are getting too political,” he said.   . . . . “That is what I have tried to do for seven years,” Father Conroy said. “It doesn’t sound political to me.” “If you are hospital chaplain, you are going to pray about health,” he added. “If you are a chaplain of Congress, you are going to pray about what Congress is doing.”

Fr. Conroy is a Jesuit. Ryan can’t seem to learn the fundamental lesson that you do not fck with The Society. When he was employed as a millstone on the 2012 Republican presidential ticket, Ryan got crossways with the Jesuits at Georgetown, to his hilarious disadvantage.

However, as this incident makes clear, and even though he has announced that he will blight our lives no more next year, Paul Ryan plans to “run through the tape” in his tireless search for ways to be a public jerk. Mr. Madison says, “I told you so.”

Trump's Terrifying Nomination to the Office of International Religious Freedom.

No one talks more about religious freedom more while striving to take it away from others than the Christofascists and evangelical Christians.  Any restriction on their right to mistreat or discriminate against others is shrilly called a threat to their "religious freedom," yet, if allowed to have their way, contraception would be illegal, homosexuality would lead to imprisonment or worse, non-Christians would be greatly restricted in their ability to worship and the separation of church and state envisioned by the Founding Fathers would be eliminated.  Disturbingly, the Christofascists have found a strong ally in the White House.  Der Trumpenführer has delivered on few if any of his campaign promises to rank and file Americans.  But he has delivered on a number made to Christian extremists in New York in June, 2016, which collectively point towards Christofascist supremacy. For example, he's appointed Neil Gorsuch, a man who would reverse that Supreme Court's same sex marriage ruling, to that Court; his appointees, Betsy De Vos and Jeff Sessions are busy reversing Obama era protections for LGBT students; last week Sessions argued in a brief to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that  the Civil Rights Act of 1964 offers no protections to LGBT Americans; last week Trump said he was banning transgender troops from the U.S. Military.  Continuing this frightening trend, he has now anti-LGBT Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback to lead the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom.  Religion Dispatches looks at this very disturbing nomination.  Here are excerpts:

After the president’s hastily tweeted ban on transgender Americans serving openly in the military, the Justice Department’s unusual interjection in a federal employment lawsuit to proclaim, contrary to growing precedent, that existing civil rights laws do not protect LGBT people, Trump announced his intent to nominate notorious anti-LGBT Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback to lead the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom.

As NPR rightly noted (in its opening line, no less), Brownback is “one of the least popular governors in the country,” but he’s been working to elevate his profile as a conservative Catholic culture warrior for more than a decade. The Ambassador-at-Large position is considered a senior advisor to the administration, while the Office of International Religious Freedom states that its mission is to “monitor religious persecution and discrimination worldwide, . . . 

But given Brownback’s history of using “religious freedom” as a sword to discriminate against LGBT people, his nomination offers the strongest evidence yet that, when the Trump administration talks about “religious freedom,” it actually means “Christian supremacy.” Though Brownback an equal-opportunity excluder: the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which Newsweek identified as the nation’s largest Muslim civil liberties group, said Brownback should be “disqualified” from the position due to his history of “rushing to sign anti-Islam legislation designed to vilify Muslims.”

Brownback’s nomination is also the latest sign that Trump is willing to hire even economic “losers” if it appeals to his base, which has been grumbling lately about the president’s attacks on his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions.

If confirmed, Brownback would be the first religious freedom Ambassador-at-Large who did not attend seminary or a pursue a similar denominational education. . . . . it’s much more likely to mean he will continue the Christian supremacist agenda he’s been pushing since he entered public office. New York‘s Ed Kilgore explains:

[Brownback] was a member of the shadowy conservative Christian power-elite group the Fellowship; a disciple of meta-culture-warrior Chuck Colson; and a former evangelical turned Catholic by way of the controversial conservative group Opus Dei. Unsurprisingly, Brownback was dubbed “God’s Senator” in a rather frightening profile by Jeff Sharlet that appeared in 2006. In one prototypical action, in 2004, Brownback traveled to Alabama to be present for the unveiling of a blatantly theocratic Constitution Restoration Act, designed to remove church-state conflicts from the jurisdiction of the federal courts.

Those who haven’t been subjected to Brownback’s regressive tax policies (which have nearly bankrupted his home state) or his right-wing political agenda might be wondering what all the fuss is about. . . . . he is staunchly opposed to abortion, and has signed a host of laws restricting access to any form of pregnancy termination. When it comes to LGBT rights, Brownback distinguished himself early as a fierce opponent to any measure that conferred on LGBT people equal dignity under the law. He pointedly refused to allow Kansas to embrace marriage equality, resisting orders from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals when it found, in 2014, that same-sex couples in that circuit had a Constitutional right to marry.

After losing that battle, Brownback focused his efforts on excluding LGBT people from as many parts of public life as possible, leaning heavily on a lopsided definition of “religious freedom.” In 2016, he signed a law that allowed student groups at public colleges and universities to engage in discrimination without penalty — as long as the discrimination was rooted in “sincerely held religious beliefs.” When signing the bill, he was surrounded by members of the Kansas Catholic Conference and the anti-LGBT Family Policy Alliance of Kansas. Video of the signing ceremony, tellingly, includes zero non-Christians.

Of course, none of that was unexpected, given Brownback’s voting record during his 14-year tenure in the U.S. Senate. Brownback opposed hate crimes legislation, claiming in 2007 that efforts to prosecute violent bias-based crimes against LGBT people were actually aimed at “not allowing people to speak their beliefs about homosexuality.” He co-sponsored a failed attempted to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban marriage equality . . .

None of that history provides any indication that Brownback has an interest in protecting religious liberty as the bedrock principle it was intended to be, either at home or abroad. Instead, it’s an unavoidable signal to Trump’s right-wing, white evangelical Christian base that he will continue to privilege their delusional claims of “persecution” in dealing with far-flung countries that don’t kowtow to conservative Christian doctrine.

5th Circuit Allows Anti-LGBT Law to Go Into Effect

Emboldened by the election of Donald Trump, a number of Republican controlled state legislatures rushed to pass falsely named "religious freedom" laws that would allow open discrimination against LGBT citizens.  Backward hell hole, Mississippi was among the first states to pass such a bill (a less hideous bill in Virginia was vetoed by Democrat Governor Terry McAuliffe).   Now, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit on Thursday ruled that Mississippi can start enforcing a law that will let merchants and government employees cite religious beliefs to deny services to same-sex couples.  The ruling reversed the District Court ruling that had blocked the law before it could take effect last July.  How the Court believes that openly targeting a minority for mistreatment will pass muster under Supreme Court rulings such as Romer v.Evans is baffling.  There has never been much reason to visit Mississippi, now there is even less reason to do so.  To my "friends" and acquaintances who have said that I and other taxpaying LGBT citizens have nothing to fear under Trump/the GOP, my comment is this: when are you going to pull your head out of your ass and wake up to reality? Blogger friend Joe Jervis looks at this disturbing development.  Here are are excerpts:

A federal appeals court says Mississippi can start enforcing a law that will let merchants and government employees cite religious beliefs to deny services to same-sex couples. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday reversed a judge’s decision that had blocked the law before it could take effect last July.

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves had ruled that the law unconstitutionally establishes preferred beliefs and creates unequal treatment for LGBT people. Republican Gov. Phil Bryant and other supporters say the law protects beliefs that marriage can be between only a man and a woman, and that a person’s gender is determined at birth and cannot be changed.

Via press release from Lambda Legal:

Today, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the injunction against Mississippi House Bill 1523, the discriminatory anti-LGBT legislation challenged in Barber v. Bryant, the federal lawsuit brought by Mississippi civil rights attorney Robert McDuff, the Mississippi Center for Justice and Lambda Legal.  The advocates will continue to fight this discriminatory law. 

Overruling the lower court decision, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit denied that LGBT Mississippians are subject to imminent discrimination by HB 1523 and ordered the block to the law lifted because the plaintiffs—a group of ministers, LGBT residents, community leaders and activists—lack standing since they cannot claim a specific harm caused by the law that has yet to go into effect.

“We had to put guards in front of our church after the bill initially passed because there was a truck with a swastika parked across the street and just this week the Christian Knights of the KKK distributed flyers throughout the Hattiesburg area. Today’s ruling leaves us more exposed, so we will have to be more vigilant than ever before to protect our church, our families and our dignity,” said Brandiilyne Mangum-Dear, Barber plaintiff.

Note: government employees can now discriminate.  So much for equality under the law.  The Christofascists want nothing less than an established religion in violation of the U.S. Constitution.  Political whores in the GOP are only too happy to prostitute themselves to these foul people. 

Will the Politicization of Churches Backfire?

Trump and Christofascists/hate merchants James Dobson and Tony Perkins

As noted, Donald Trump's "religious liberty" executive order has left the anti-gay forces among the Christofascist hugely disappointed.  The longed for exemption of Christofascists from non-discrimination laws and ordinances did not materialize.  What the hate merchants did receive was purported cover for right wing churches to openly engage in political activities - not that many weren't already doing so on a de facto basis anyways.  Here in Virginia, The Family Foundation, perhaps the leading hate group in Virginia, has for years operated a network with conservative churches and pastors and pushed these churches to vigorously work for TFF's regressive and theocratic agenda.   Thus, the executive order may not result in any change in the reality on the ground that much.   More importantly, it may accelerate the exodus from Christianity and religion in general that is sweeping the country.  I have long thought that despite a uptick in aggressiveness and stridency, long term the Christofascists may be one of the most powerful elements in the death of Christianity.  A piece in Salon looks at this possibility.  Here are highlights:

Thursday, on the National Day of Prayer, Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty.” . . . . The final draft of the order, however, was a drastic rewriting. All the LGBT-specific attacks were taken out and abortion was not mentioned, though the new order does direct federal officials to consider changing health care regulations in order to stop insurance coverage of contraception for huge swaths of women. Instead, in a somewhat surprising move, the executive order largely focuses on undermining a law meant to discourage religious authorities from using their powers to influence elections.

This move is obviously meant as a giveaway to leaders of the religious right, who did so much to help elect Trump, and also as a way for Republicans to consolidate power by allowing conservative Christian pastors even more leeway to pressure their congregants to vote Republican. But this power grab could well backfire on the Christian right. Instead of drumming up more votes for Republicans, breaking down barriers between church and state may end up driving even more people out of the churches entirely.

Trump’s executive order doesn’t change the law — that would take an act of Congress. But it officially discourages the IRS from auditing or fining religious organizations and churches that may be in violation of it. . . . . it’s a solution looking for a problem. There’s no evidence that churches are being treated especially harshly by the IRS.

Still, the release of this executive order and all the publicity around it could encourage ministers, especially those of the fundamentalist variety, to get even bolder when it comes to campaigning from the pulpit. That’s where there’s a good chance this whole effort could backfire. There’s a fair amount of evidence to suggest that churches that become more political and conservative aren’t recruiting more people to the right-wing cause, and in fact may be driving people away.

One of the biggest social trends of the past decade is the rapid growth of the “nones” — people with no affiliation to organized religion — which is particularly pronounced with younger Americans. Both Pew Research and the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) have found that up to a quarter of Americans don’t identity with any religious tradition at all, up from 6 percent in 1991. Four out of 10 Americans under the age of 30 are unchurched.

But where it gets really interesting is when one starts looking at the reasons why. Most nonreligious people — 78 percent, according to Pew Research — were raised in a religion and abandoned it in adulthood. While most simply say they no longer believe, there is some evidence that distaste for the religious right has had a significant impact.
According to PRRI, nearly 30 percent of those who have left a church cite their disapproval of religious homophobia as a reason. Sixteen percent say their churches became too political and 19 percent cite the clergy sex abuse scandal.

Sixty-six percent of nonbelievers in the PRRI survey agreed with the statement that “religion causes more problems in society than it solves.”

Encouraging ministers and priests to become more belligerent and more repressive in their politics, in the face of these rapid changes in religious affiliation and religious attitudes, is not likely to gain converts to the conservative cause. It’s probably just going to make more people who were already feeling uneasy with the conservative bent of much of Christianity to choose to leave their churches, and quite possibly to abandon religion altogether.

[P]olling data shows that most Americans think it’s a good idea to keep churches away from direct political campaigning. Pew Research polling shows that 66 percent of American respondents support the Johnson amendment.

Perhaps, then, atheists should be the ones celebrating this executive order. Legally, Trump’s latest order is largely toothless, but culturally, it’s only likely to accentuate the aspects of religion Americans like the least, namely the controlling and reactionary aspects of it. That, in turn, will encourage more Americans to use their Sunday mornings for sleeping and shopping, rather than enduring political lectures from conservative religious pastors.

Let's hope that by giving them a portion of what they want, Trump will have unwittingly accelerated their long term demise. 

Another Contrived Battle in the Phony War on Religion

If one listens to most far right conservative Christians, they will tell you that they and their faith are under unceasing attack.  Anything that restricts their ability to mistreat and discriminate against others is labeled as oppression and a threat to their "religious liberty."  The same holds true with anything that restricts their ability to suck up taxpayer funds to fuel their church operations or "ministries" such as those that operate adoption services.  Put another way, these Christofascists seek to be above the laws that govern the rest of America and they seek to force every tax payer to under write their religion (something that already occurs due to churches' tax-exempt status).  Now, a case before the U.S. Supreme Court seeks to force the State of Missouri to pay for a playground on church property.  The church involved, Trinity Lutheran Church, in Columbia, Missouri, is a part of the so-called Missouri Synod, an extremely right wing, anti-gay, anti-modernity branch of the Lutheran church in the United States.  In Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, it is arguing that taxpayers should pay for the upgrade of its school playground - a playground that is not open to the public.  One good review of the manufactured controversy is here in The Atlantic.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the case which Christofascists hope to use as a foothold to divert public education funds to church affiliated schools.  Here are excerpts:  

Before he joined the Supreme Court a decade ago, John Roberts proclaimed what he called “the cardinal rule of judicial restraint: If it is not necessary to decide more, it is necessary not to decide more.”

But as he heard arguments Wednesday in this term’s much anticipated church-state case, the chief justice seemed to be practicing a different rule from the one he preached: More is more.

Restraint was in short supply during oral arguments in the Trinity Lutheran Church case at the high court. It was a manufactured controversy, cooked up by conservative interest groups that are hoping to chip away at constitutional provisions in 39 states restricting taxpayer money from going to churches. In this case, it wasn’t only unnecessary to decide more — it was unnecessary to decide it at all.

It wasn’t a big deal to start with: A preschool in Missouri had applied for a state grant in 2012 to repave its playground with flooring made from old tires. The state rated the application highly but denied the grant because the school was run by a church. The church sued.

The complaint became irrelevant last week when the state’s new governor, Eric Greitens, reversed Missouri’s position and said he would allow religious organizations to compete for such grants. 

Sonia Sotomayor asked Layton: If representatives of the state “are not willing to fight this case, are they manufacturing adversity by appointing you?”

The short answer: Yes.

In front of the Supreme Court on Wednesday, Concerned Women for America, a conservative group, was displaying balloons and signs proclaiming “Every Child’s Safety Matters.” Said Annette Kiehne, the Trinity Lutheran preschool director, “This is about keeping our kids safe, wherever they play.”

But it really wasn’t about that. It was about interest groups whose business model depends on perpetuating the culture wars trying to frighten people into thinking Christianity is under siege. It was a springtime version of the annual “war on Christmas.”

Michael Farris, CEO of the Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented Trinity in the case, was fairly straightforward about his motives, telling reporters in the plaza that “there’s a broad concern among religious people in this country that we’re becoming second-class citizens.”

But if this supposed assault on Christianity is real, it has been going on for a long time. Opponents of the church-state language in state constitutions correctly say that these “Blaine Amendments” were shaped by anti-Catholic bigotry in the late 19th century. But their roots go back to the founding. Layton told the justices that Missouri in 1820 adopted language based on Thomas Jefferson’s 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which said that “no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever.”

What has changed now? Nothing — except the rise of interest groups (on both sides) that justify their existence and boost their fundraising with such controversies. The goal this time: to roll back restrictions on public money going to churches. An article in the conservative National Review argued that “a victory for Trinity Lutheran would fundamentally alter the landscape of school choice.”

So that’s what it’s about: Invalidating dozens of state constitutional provisions keeping public money out of churches. “There are 39 states with constitutional amendments like the one Missouri has. That’s a history,” Sotomayor said. “And the essence of that history is, basically, we don’t want . . . the vast majority of states to fund houses of worship.”

[T]he American tradition that the government doesn’t give cash to churches is venerable. A restrained judiciary wouldn’t upend that tradition because of a manufactured conflict over a playground.

The church's suit needs to be thrown out.  Religious institutions of all stripes have a simple choice:  if they want taxpayer funds, then they must not discriminate and must make their facilities open to the public.  If they are not willing to take that approach, then do not ask for taxpayer funds.  It really is that simple.  But I'd go further.  Tax-exempt status for churches needs to end.  Taxpayers should not be forced to indirectly support churches they do not attend and that may be outright hostile towards them.  Moreover, most churches spend a pittance on true charity work, so the myth that they are true charities needs to end.  They are little more than clubs to which people choose to join.  Their "fellowship" is little different that what one finds at most yacht clubs and country clubs. They do NOT deserve public funds.  End of discussion.