Can Bush Fund Faith-Base Conferences?

(CBS)  One of the first initiatives George W. Bush pushed as president will be challenged next week in the Supreme Court. As CBS News correspondent Thalia Assuras reports, the high court will hear arguments on Wednesday in the first First Amendment case directly related to Mr. Bush's faith-based programs.

Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor don't seem like much of a threat, but if they have their way, faith-based conferences – like the one the president hosted in Washington on March of 2006 – could disappear.

"I appreciate your attendance," Mr. Bush said at the second White House National Conference on Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. "I take this conference very seriously."

The conferences, one component of Mr. Bush's faith-based initiative, are designed to help religious groups get access to federal funding. Eleven cabinet offices have centers for faith-based programs, which operate in many states to help those in need.

In 2006, a lower court said the Freedom from Religion Foundation, headed by Gaylor and Barker, had legal standing as taxpayers to challenge the White House practice of spending money on the conferences. The administration appealed the case to the Supreme Court.

"We're challenging the creation of the faith-based offices at the White House and cabinet levels," Gaylor said. "And their faith based bureaucracy, what they've set up, with multi-million dollars."

Their argument: that the funding of the conferences violates the separation between church and state and is unconstitutional. The president has insisted the programs are on the correct side of that wall and that they work.

"If you're addicted to alcohol, if a faith program is able to get you off alcohol, we ought to say hallelujah and thanks at the federal level," Mr. Bush said at the 2006 conference.

"I understand people saying I don't like my money going to that particular process, but, you know what, you and I both pay taxes, and there are things the government funds that I don't like," said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice. "But that's part of the deal, part of being American. You can't simply object because your portion of your tax dollars is going to something you really don't like. It's just not the way the system works.

Sekulow's group has filed a friend of the court brief supporting the administration in the upcoming case.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation has brought successful challenges to faith-based programs in the past, including "MentorKids" – a program that had its funding suspended in 2005 after the foundation sued claiming the group accepted only church-going mentors.

If this week's court case challenging the conferences is decided against them, Gaylor and Barker say they won't give up.

"We can still challenge individual applications. We can still go after the MentorKids. We can still go after specific allocations if we do see violations of church-state separation," Barker said. "So that wouldn't stop."

[josephinew-2009]

I know firsthand that this FAITH BASED INITIATIVE DOES NOT SUPPORT RELIGIOUS ACTIVITIES!!! If any one of you would attend the conference, you will see that one CANNOT use the money to promote or teach religion with that money. I personally have looked into this only to find out that our "religious" organization who have been taking abandoned children out of the government's FOSTER CARE SYSTEM and getting them adopted into stable homes for FREE (as we raise the money to pay for the adoptions ourselves)cannot qualify for "government" money because we adopt to Christians. So, for all you atheists spectators out there, do your homework before you clutter the courts with your wild accusations!

I don't know why this would be called faith-based except for the fact that the government will not discriminate against Ta-paying Americans who are Christians.

As for all the other unnecessary comments on Christians, all I can say is that this life on earth is not your own and one day you will know the truth. May the Lord have mercy on you!

[r22037]

ask.com and type in virgin, menses, stools, urine and you will find that allah creates such type virgins for his male slaves. If you are going to have a faith-based program for Christians you have to sack the 1st Amendment and have one for all religions such as Rev. 22 where Christ threatens to kill Jezebel for her fornication. I'm simply saying: Sack faith-based tax dollars not the 1st Amendment. Richard Grimes [e-mail]

[randalds]

-Hey RandalDS, Your hatred is astronomical, your lies are neverending, your insults and ridicule against all those who actually stand up for Christ instead of "pacifying" are continuous, and your continuous rejection of the Truth speaks just like the likes of an atheist.

Posted by singinrick at 09:58 PM : Feb 25, 2007

Well I'm compulsively honest, so the lying is not true and I don't hate god, because he/she/it doesn't exist. However as for the rest of it, thanks.

[scott4261]

The influence of Jerry Falwell in the early days of the Ronald Reagan's first term set the tone for the religious right-wing takeover of that is now rotting the Republican Party from the inside.

[scott4261]

The influence of Jerry Falwell in the early days of the Ronald Reagan's first term set the tone for the religious right-wing takeover of that is now rotting the Republican Party from the inside today.

[scott4261]

I firmly believe that government and religion are each best served without influencing the other. The Southern Baptist Convention strongly supported the separation of church and State until the 1980s. Until then, even the devoutly religious held to the belief that every American has the right to believe or not to believe as he or she sees fit. That is my belief. And in my opinion, to see it any other way is, well, un-American!

[gunownerdan]

"Who does not see 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?"
-- James Madison, "Memorial and Remonstrance," 1785
www.AU.org

[scott4261]

OK, rick. And even though you didn't bring this up, I did mention my LTR in the civil unions threads.

If I didn't know better, I'd swear you are a product of Exodus' ex-gay ministries. You are truly obsessed. Good luck in winning converts to "conversion therapy."

May the Peace of the Lord be with you, rick

Scott

[jdweymouth]

bvckvs: They already ruled on this one when the EO was issued. They ruled it constitutional.

[bvckvs-2009]

I'll be glad when the Supreme Court finally starts ruling on Bush's various crimes - civil and criminal. His on-the-clock pursuit of his hate-based, apocalyptic faith has seriously damaged our nation.