As final recommendations are being prepared for President Obama, members of the White House's Faith-Based Advisory Council yesterday discussed drafts of the reports reflecting their work so far. The Washington Post's Michelle Boorstein writes that as expected the group's initial efforts have focused on areas of broadest agreement.
It sounds like many of the church-state questions facing the group do not fall into that category:
Dozens of council and task force members packed into a small room today at the Commerce Department…to discuss the report, including its lack of consensus on the legal distinction between direct and indirect aid. This question governs many millions of dollars and questions about whether groups that GET aid from the government have to meet the same church-state separation requirements as subcontractors of those groups. Members also agreed to disagree about whether faith-based groups who do business with the government should be required to create a legal non-profit {501(c)3} in order to keep its religious work separate from its secular work.
Meanwhile a NYTimes editorial today urges the President and Justice Department to follow the advice of a coalition of civil and religious liberty advocates, including the Baptist Joint Committee, by rejecting the Bush administration's questionable and troubling interpretation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was used to justify religious discrimination in hiring for positions paid for by tax dollars.
Mr. Holder should [withdraw the memo making that argument], and Mr. Obama should revise his February executive order to include the anti-discrimination language that he omitted the first time around.
As a candidate, Mr. Obama drew the right line. Effective social service programs should not be ineligible for federal dollars just because they have a religious affiliation. But they should be required to abide by the same anti-discrimination laws as everyone else. Public money should not be used to pay for discrimination.
