Osler's Razor

As long as the money is distributed for secular charitable purposes only, and the grants are viewpoint-neutral, I don't see anything in establishment clause jurisprudence that gives me pause.

So, 1's good. 2's good too, but you have to be careful about what that means. One way of decreasing the number of abortions is providing cost-effective birth control and working on better male birth control. 2 doesn't necessarily mean "ban it and tell everyone to be abstinent."

I think that the latter method, which is what most conservatives would argue for, is impermissibily political for a charitable group.

3 is tricky as well. How does one "rehabilitate" them? Get them an education, find them a job, etc.? Or is rehabilitation "get them to pay money to our organization and attend our meetings and who cares what they do outside of them?" Religion has proven to be no more or less effective at making people good citizens. I see no reason to forbid religious-based attempts at rehabilitation (personally, I'd like to see Zen rehabilitation; that's the kind of reformed criminal I want), but neither do I see a reason why we should allow proselytizing under this guise.

4 seems to have no benefit to society at all, and is also impermissibly political as well. I dislike (some) pornography for various reasons, like exploitation of the people within the field, but I don't think attempting to ruin the livelihoods of legitimate workers in the sex/adult entertainment field in the name of dubious "morality" is of a benefit to anyone.

The trend I see occurring through my thoughts is this: as long as the group is providing a socially beneficial service, who cares what their ideological basis is? If they are helping the poor because they think Jesus commanded them to, or that it's one of the pillars of Islam, or that mighty Odin in the Sky-Hall has commanded that a feast be laid for all, who cares? The service rendered is still the same, and the same basic stricture applies: no religious stuff with your charitable stuff.

BUT... if the money is used to directly fund inherently religious or political activity, it's gotta stop. Yes, unfortunately that means my First Church of Uncle Karl can't have our Saturday "Labor of Love" brunches where we eat solid, proletarian grain and plot the overthrow of the capitalist upperclass funded by the government. Oh well. The nice church down the street that gives used coats to the homeless still gets to do that, and that's (ultimately) a more worthy goal, and one the government should fund.
 

When I think "Stupid Nastiness" and "Sarah Palin" I don't typically think about her as the perpetrator of the "Stupid Nastiness." I'd suggest that the hatchet job performed upon her by the Democrats and the media during the last election was unique in its viciousness and stupidity.

That's not to say that the Republicans aren't unnecessarily mean. I'm just suggesting we not forget the democrats. I'm quickly coming to the opinion that neither party is all that attractive anymore. It seems that we have been deprived of late of folks of the quality of John and Abigail Adams, Truman, Eisenhower, Reagan or Teddy Roosevelt.

As to your question: I am convinced it is in the country's best interest to give all the help it can to the churches to do what they do very well (and so much better than Uncle Sam) - feeding the hungry, healing the sick, supporting the family, remembering the prisoner, and picking up the down-trodden.
 

No problem with any of them... so long as the money is carefully restricted to the social programs.

The danger is that the religious groups would take the money and use if for political activities or something else.

Of course, moving money to other purposes is a problem for all kinds of grantees, not just churches.
 

It's a close call, for me. Lane and IPLG make some persuasive points. And I'm a member of a church in downtown DC that runs social programs such as tutoring inner-city kids, helping transition mentally ill people into society, and giving food and other aid to the homeless who are literally on their doorstep. I actually don't know if the church gets any government money for these programs; I suspect not. And it would be a huge help if the church could get some funding for them.

However, I'm still uncomfortable with the idea of government funding faith groups' work. First of all, it's a slippery slope and open to politicization, as evidenced by the 4 possible uses for that money that Osler names.

Second, it seems to me that, by funneling money to religious organizations to do social programs, the govnernment is abdicating its own responsibilities to help citizens who need it. It seems like a cop-out, in order to avoid tough and yes, often ideological fights over how the money gets spent on social programs. Why can't government step up to the plate and help people directly?
 

And, I would add, of course the issue with the government giving out money to religious groups is the issue of who decides which groups get the money . . . but I would prefer that all of us, through our elected officials, decide which social programs to fund, rather than some Office of Faith-Based Initiatives run by political appointees decide who gets the money (even if its in an administration whose priorities I agree with).
 

I'm against all of them. Here is what I wish they would do instead. I wish they would cut my taxes and allow me to go down and give money to those organizations, whether they be religious organizations or Lane's group of grain-loving hippie socialists, that do the type of work I support. Numerous studies have shown that when taxes go down, and when people have money to give, that is exactly what they do. They give. I trust myself, and you guys (even Lane), more than I trust the government. So why would I want to give the government control over what charitable organizations get my money?

Swissgirl:

"Second, it seems to me that, by funneling money to religious organizations to do social programs, the govnernment is abdicating its own responsibilities to help citizens who need it."

I also don't think the government has a "responsibility" to fund these types of programs. I don't remember in the constitution where it says, "The Federal Government of these United States shall establish numerous agencies to oversee bloated social programs." Maybe I just missed that part.

Lane:

I don't see how a church offering abstinence only education (which I personally think is dumb, but to each there own) is any more or less political than offering free birth control. I imagine the Catholic church would say that government funding for free birth control would be very political. I imagine that planned parenthood would say that telling kids that having sex before marriage is very political. Why is it that you only think one of those groups has the right to define what is "political" and what is a "secular charitable purpose"?
 

Birth control is a type of pharmaceutical. As long as it's dispensed without a pamphlet proselytizing about a political issue, I don't see why a charitable org would run afoul of my brightline. I don't expect the Church to be the one handing it out, nor do I think (for instance) that a catholic hospital should stock any. But the medicine itself can be dispensed without regard to ideology. I can't say the same about abstinence education, though, not because I disagree with it but because the product being delivered is ideological.
 

Abstinence is ideological?

The Problem: there are too many teenagers having sex and getting pregnant.

Potential Solution: Teenagers shouldn't have sex.

Now, I think it is a bad idea because it is unrealistic. But it doesn't have any inherent religious connotations. You just don't like, or agree, with the people that generally support abstinence education, and therefore it is a political issue for YOU.

In much the same way that birth control is a political issue for some Catholics and some evangelical Christians because they think it runs afoul of their moral/spiritual code and therefore shouldn't be endorsed by or sponsored by the government in any way.

And all of this illustrates why the government should just stay out of all of this, because there is no way to decide what is inherently political and what isn't because the bright line would be different for every person.
 

I think the biggest issue is that in funding the organizations, the government gets a say in how they're run. For example, you can't have the government funneling money into a religious charity that reserves the right to exclude gay people from its membership. That would be government-funded discrimintation, which is just as unacceptable as telling the government that they can tell a religious organization how to conduct its business. The idea is to keep the funding as secular as possible, and this is where the difficulty lies. I'm the first to admit that the private sector does many things better than the government; striking the balance between productivity and restriction is the hard part.
 

RRL, you know, if your house were destroyed by a hurricane tomorrow--let's say all of Waco was flattened by a tornado, God forbid--I imagine you and everybody else in Waco would appreciate FEMA or the National Guard coming in to bring you water and temporary housing and keep order.

True, they're not always run well (as we saw in Katrina). But is there really a privately funded, large-scale alternative in a situation like that? Are you actually saying you don't want government to do anything to help its citizens in hardship?

And I suppose some people will, as you say, use the extra money they'd get from lower taxes to give to charitable causes. But there's no way to predict the extent to which that would happen. To me, it seems there are some basic things that government should do for its citizens.

You and I demonstrate the classic George Lakoff dichotomy in how we see the role of government, in our "frames," as he calls them (in "Don't Think of an Elephant"). You see government as the Strict Father model, in which government's there to discipline, give tough love, and set the kid out there on his own.

I see government in the Nurturant Parent model, in which government is there to provide protection from dangers, with a sense of responsibility toward its citizens.