Atheists sue to stop Christian mentoring

The Wisconsin-based atheist group Freedom From Religion Foundation is suing to cut off federal funding to a Christian child-mentoring program that helps troubled kids.

Last year, the federal government awarded a $225,000 contract, part of $9 million awarded to 52 Arizona groups, to Phoenix-based MentorKids USA, according to the Madison, Wisc.-based Capital Times.

The lawsuit, presided over by U.S. Judge John Shabaz, is demanding a summary judgment that federal funding of the program cease until the government "has a demonstrated plan in place to comply with its constitutional obligations," reports the Wisconsin paper.

Citing the First Amendment, the atheist foundation said, "Mentoring to convert is not a suitable social service to be provided by the government," said the report.

MentorKids USA was launched in 1997 by Orville Krieger, in partnership with Charles Colson's Prison Fellowship, "to address the needs of at-risk youth in the Phoenix, Arizona, metropolitan area by matching caring Christian adults with youth ages 8-17 who showed warning signs of becoming criminal offenders," says the Christian organization's website.

Originally called Phoenix MatchPoint, the group changed its name last January to MentorKids USA. It has a long and successful track record in mentoring children in trouble with the law, who have dysfunctional family backgrounds, have been physically or sexually abused or who are involved with drug or alcohol abuse. To date, MentorKids USA has helped over 500 kids.

In the program, mentors commit time each week to be a friend and role model for an at-risk youth. The mentors "offer concrete expressions of unconditional love and support to the mentee," says the group's website, "and the two participate in activities designed to build friendship, trust, and constructive values."

Some of the Freedom From Religion Foundation's "legal accomplishments," according to its website, include:

Winning the first federal lawsuit challenging direct funding by the government of a faith-based agency

According to its website, the non-profit foundation was incorporated in Wisconsin in 1978 and is "a national membership association of freethinkers: atheists, agnostics and skeptics of any pedigree."

"First Amendment violations are accelerating," says the group's website. "The religious right is campaigning to raid the public till and advance religion at taxpayer expense, attacking our secular public schools, the rights of nonbelievers, and the Establishment Clause.

"The Foundation recognizes that the United States was first among nations to adopt a secular Constitution. The founders who wrote the U.S. Constitution wanted citizens to be free to support the church of their choice, or no religion at all. Our Constitution was very purposefully written to be a godless document, whose only references to religion are exclusionary.

"It is vital to buttress the Jeffersonian 'wall of separation between church and state' which has served our nation so well."

But William Rehnquist, current chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, says this view put forth by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the ACLU and similar groups is a fiction and mockery of the true meaning of the First Amendment.

The Establishment Clause, explained Rehnquist in a 1985 opinion, "forbade establishment of a national religion, and forbade preference among religious sects or denominations. … The Establishment Clause did not require government neutrality between religion and irreligion nor did it prohibit the Federal Government from providing nondiscriminatory aid to religion. There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the Framers intended to build the 'wall of separation' [between church and state]."

By the way, a line should be drawn between the second amendment and the states as well because the second amendment is actually uniques in its wording and is not just a restraint on the feds.

Is that what the founding fathers intended? I strongly doubt it. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights were thought to be universal. The original 13 states each adopted a very similar set of rights, as well. Consider the Virginia Constitution:

Sec. 13 - Militia; standing armies; military subordinate to civil power

That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state, therefore, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

California doesn't have such a cluase. Who will protect my second amendment rights here? Right now, I can't count on the federal government, the state government, the courts, or the press.

The founding fathers might be regretting their wording of the second amendment if they were alive to see what has happened, but I doubt that anything they could have written back then would have helped us.

Office of the Attorney General
Washington D.C. 20530

May 17, 2001

Mr. James J. Baker
Executive Director
National Rifle Association
Institute for Legislative Action
11250 Waples Mill Road
Fairfax, VA 20030

Dear Mr. Baker,

Thank you for your letter of April 10, 2001 regarding my views on the Second Amendment. While I cannot comment on any pending litigation, let me state unequivocally my view that the text and the original intent of the Second Amendment clearly protect the of right of individuals to keep and bear firearms.

While some have argued that the Second Amendment guarantees only a "collective" right of the States to maintain militias, I believe the Amendment's plain meaning and original intent prove otherwise. Like the First and Fourth Amendments, the Second Amendment protects the rights of "the people," which the Supreme Court has noted is a term of art that should be interpreted consistently throughout the Bill of Rights United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259, 265 (1990) (plurality opinion). Just as the First and Fourth Amendment secure individual rights of speech and security respectively, the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. This view of the text comports with the all but unanimous understanding of the Founding Fathers. See, e.g. Federalist No. 46 (Madison); Federalist No. 29 (Hamilton); see also, Thomas Jefferson, Proposed Virginia Constitution, 1764 ("No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."); George Mason at Virginia's U.S. Constitution ratification convention 1788 ("I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people . . . To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.").

This is not a novel position. In early decisions, the United States Supreme Court routinely indicated that the right protected by the Second Amendment applied to individuals. See, e.g., Logan v. United States, 144 U.S. 263, 276 (1892); Miller v. Texas, 153 U.S. 535, 538 (1893); Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 U.S. 275, 281-82 (1897): Maxwell v. Dow, 176 U.S. 581, 597 (1900). Justice Story embraced the same view in his influential Commentaries on the Constitution. See 3 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution § 1890 p. 746 (1833). It is the view that was adopted by United States Attorney General Homer Cummings before Congress in testifying about the constitutionality of the first federal gun control statute, the National Firearms Act of 1934. See The National Firearms Act of 1934: Hearings on H.R. 9066 Before the House Comm. On Ways and Means, 73rd Cong. 6, 13, 19 (1934). As recently as 1986, the United States Congress and President Ronald Reagan

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explicitly adopted this view in the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act. See Pub. L. No. 99-308, § 1 (b) (1986). Significantly, the individual rights view embraced by the preponderance of legal scholarship on the subject, which, I note, includes articles by academics on both ends of the political spectrum. See, e.g., William Van Alstyne, The Second Amendment and the Personal Right to Arms, 43 Duke L.J. 1236 (1994); Akhil Reed Amar, The Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment, 101 Yale L.J. 1193 (1992); Sanford Levinson, The Embarrassing Second Amendment, 99 Yale L.J. 637 (1989); Don Kates, Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment, 82 Mich. L. Rev. 204 (1983).

In light of this vast body of evidence, I believe it is clear that the Constitution protects the private ownership of firearms for lawful purposes1 As I was reminded during my confirmation hearing, some hold a different view and would, in effect, read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution. I must respectfully disagree with this view, for when I was sworn as Attorney General of the United States, I took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. That responsibility applies to all parts of the Constitution, including the Second Amendment.

Thank you for your interest in this matter.

Sincerely,

John Ashcroft
Attorney General

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1 Of course, the individual rights view of the Second Amendment does not prohibit Congress from enacting laws restricting firearms ownership for compelling state interests, such as prohibiting firearms ownership by convicted felons, just as the First Amendment does not prohibit shouting "fire" in a crowded movie theater. As Samuel Adams explained at the Massachusetts ratifying convention, the proposed Constitution should "never [be] construed . . . to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms." Reprinted in 2 B. Schwartz, The Bill of Rights: A Documentary History 675 (1971) (emphasis added).

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