General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIn a flagrant act of contempt for the separation of church and state,
the Trump administration has simultaneously issued regulations in eight federal agencies that will blow the door open for taxpayer-funded religious discrimination.
The new rules allow federally-funded "faith-based" organizations to impose religious programming on nonbelievers, discriminate in who they hire, and even refuse services to anyone they deem to be religiously objectionable.
Atheists, LGBTQ, women, the unmarried, religious minorities...no group will be protected.
Before the rules go into effect, the federal agencies involved are required to evaluate public comments on them. Will you use your voice to defend the separation of church and state?
Look at what these terrible new rules will do:
Revoke the right of beneficiaries to request an alternative, secular service provider in accordance with their own belief or lack of belief.
Deny the right to services that are free of religious programming, messaging, iconography, and litmus tests.
Repeal the right of beneficiaries to a written notice of their rights prior to applying for services.
It boils down to this: These rules will allow discrimination in practically every public service you can think of. Universities, employment assistance, housing, after-school programs, even nutrition assistance to seniors like Meals on Wheels.
Thats right! They want to allow discrimination for Meals on Wheels!
link
Response to yortsed snacilbuper (Original post)
sillystring2000 This message was self-deleted by its author.
mr_lebowski
(33,643 posts)Response to mr_lebowski (Reply #3)
sillystring2000 This message was self-deleted by its author.
mr_lebowski
(33,643 posts)About that CJ though ... you can do me but, is it cool if I owe you?
mr_lebowski
(33,643 posts)Martin Eden
(12,875 posts)Trump is just a tool in their long push towards Christo-fascism. Institutional checks & balances must first be destroyed, and Trump has been doing that with abandon.
White nationalism and Christo-fascism are two sides of the same coin.
NotHardly
(1,062 posts)I sure wish someone would tell me what ours' is ... it's getting a bit 'dark' out here.
DFW
(54,445 posts)What they want for us is so like Iran or Saudi Arabia, it's actually a deep irony that they consider these people our enemies.
Like Pogo said: "we have met the enemy, and he is us."
muriel_volestrangler
(101,368 posts)and they get to discriminate, proselytize and force religious participation as much as they want, while raking in the dollars. Example:
Under Attorney General Bill Barrs management, it appears no corner of the Justice Department can escape perversion even the annual grants the Justice Department gives to nonprofits and local governments to help victims of human trafficking.
In a new grant award, senior Justice officials rejected the recommendations of career officials and decided to deny grants to highly rated Catholic Charities in Palm Beach, Fla., and Chicanos Por La Causa in Phoenix. Instead, Reuters reported, they gave more than $1 million combined to lower-rated groups called the Lincoln Tubman Foundation and Hookers for Jesus.
Why? Well, it turns out the head of the Catholic Charities affiliate had been active with Democrats and the Phoenix group had opposed President Trumps immigration policies. By contrast, Hookers for Jesus is run by a Christian conservative and the Lincoln Tubman group was launched by a relative of a Trump delegate to the 2016 convention.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/11/why-bill-barrs-doj-replaced-catholic-charities-with-hookers-jesus/
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212981942
...
This is not the first time Hookers for Jesus has received federal grant money. In 2017, Nevada announced it was giving Loberts group nearly $300,000 through the federal Victims of Crime Act. In her grant application at the time, Lobert said church participation was voluntary.
The funding was not renewed in 2018 after the state obtained Hookers for Jesus program manuals saying it was mandatory for guests of the groups shelter, Destiny House, to attend services and volunteer at a specific church. Its staff training manual said homosexuality is immoral and abusing drugs for pleasure is witchcraft. Reuters obtained the manuals through a public records request.
One Nevada grant reviewer in 2018 questioned whether Hookers for Jesus treated victims like prisoners, while another observed the program seemed too controlling and expressed concern it forced victims to attend Bible study, the grant review documents show.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-justice-grants-exclusive/exclusive-justice-department-anti-human-trafficking-grants-prompt-whistleblower-complaint-idUSKBN20425G
keithbvadu2
(36,937 posts)Madison also made a point that any believer of any religion should understand: that the government sanction of a religion was, in essence, a threat to religion. "Who does not see," he wrote, "that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?" Madison was writing from his memory of Baptist ministers being arrested in his native Virginia.
Lars39
(26,116 posts)He would talk about certain TN counties that would only hire Baptists, because the Baptists were in charge of virtually every office and the school board.
abqtommy
(14,118 posts)what they were doin' we gave them a Royal Screwin'.
KY_EnviroGuy
(14,494 posts)my meager periodic amounts to:
Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU): https://www.au.org/
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU): https://www.aclu.org/
Reviewing these web sites, I see both organizations are already on top of this Constitutional abuse. I'm sure there are many other good orgs like these that deserve our support as well.
This clearly represents another way the ultra-wealthy right-wing is beating us to death by having to keep their ass in court over issues that should be non-starters. For those of us of limited means, these contributions could be instead going to support dozens of Democratic Party candidates around the nation or to charities that help the poor.
KY rant done......