INCITES
By Ed Silverstein
Mary and John married right out of school and were blessed with a son, Michael, and a daughter, Laura. Mary had a strong religious background and a deep love of God, which she conveyed to her children. One day John disappeared along with the family’s meager savings. Without money or a job, it wasn’t long before Mary and her kids found themselves homeless.
But they were fortunate. There was a local social service agency that provided food, shelter, job training and childcare for single mothers. Mary was so grateful to be off the street that she got on her knees and gave a prayer of thanks while the supervisor looked on with a tight smile.
Ana, a kind caseworker, took Mary under her wing. She helped the family settle into the dorm with other families and enrolled Mary’s children in the facility’s daycare center. She even helped Mary decide on job training in the field of childcare.
Mary trained for long hours, often arriving to pick up Michael and Laura just before dinner. On one occasion, she discovered Laura supplicated in prayer with the other children. Mary knew she should-n’t be upset. She didn’t mind her daughter being exposed to other faiths, but she preferred to be there to offer guidance.
Mary considered saying something to the teacher, but didn’t want to seem ungrateful. She also was worried that complaining might cause problems. True, everyone was very pleasant, but she couldn’t help notice the guarded looks she got from the other mothers and the staff when she and her kids prayed.
Then, as if by a miracle, an assistant’s position opened up in the daycare center just as Mary completed her training. Though Mary was the only qualified applicant, she was dismayed to learn that she would not get the job. The reason, she was told, was that she was of the wrong faith. They only hired their own kind.
Soon after, Mary noticed Michael was looking dejected. When she asked what was wrong, he told her Jesus was a false prophet. Mary was appalled. Who had told him such a thing? Michael told her it was his daycare teacher.
Mary complained to Ana who, while sympathetic, couldn’t offer much help. This was after all a faith-based organization. It was their belief and Mary would have to accept that if she wanted to stay. Mary realized she had no choice. The mosque offered the only social services within 100 miles. There was nothing she could do.
Though just a parable, this type of scenario is likely to play out in real life if President George Bush has his way. He is once again pushing his faith-based initiatives, one of the keystones of the president’s fundamentalist domestic agenda. If Bush succeeds, our tax funds will be handed over to religious groups purport-edly to be used for social services.
The problems with this are endless. To begin with, it forces Americans to subsidize religions they may not believe in — a forced tithe if you will. Under this administration, an unfair majority of these funds will benefit Christian organizations, though there also will be money provided to Jewish, Muslim and possibly even Krishna and Scientology groups.
I fully support using taxes for social services, but not if my hard earned dollars are given to organizations that shield child molesters, oppose a woman’s right to choose, promote the spread of AIDS through opposition to birth control, worship space aliens or annoy people in airports.
More importantly, these faith-based initiatives are unconstitutional. Of course the president’s view on constitutional protections has been quite selective. His administration went to the mat protecting the right of suspected terrorists to bear arms. Yet “W” seems to have no compunction about locking people up without due process or trampling the constitutional provisions concerning separation of church and state.
Further, funneling tax dollars to religious organizations, which Bush wants exempt from federal equal opportunity employment laws, could make our government complicit in unfair discrimination against minorities, gays and religious beliefs.
Of course, there are religious organizations that offer great services without proselytizing. But there also are groups, particularly those extreme fundamentalists, who may force those in need to face unwanted religious indoctrination in order to provide food, clothing and shelter for their children and themselves.
Potential recipients of our taxes are churches — which preach that battered women should return to their abusive husbands (often with fatal results) — have tried to erect statues to celebrate the beating death of a gay man and have used their economic clout and that of their congregations, to blackmail contractors who construct facilities for secular groups such as planned parenthood.
Such abhorrent behavior should be condemned, not funded with our taxes. And it is high time we remind the president that the founding fathers of this country supported not only freedom of religion, but also freedom from it.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 21, 2004. Read the original PDF.