Atheists sue to stop Christian mentoring

WorldNetDaily ^ | 11/27/04 | WorldNetDaily

[wagglebee]

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

Overturning a state Good Friday holiday

Winning a lawsuit barring direct taxpayer subsidy of religious schools

Removing Ten Commandments monuments and crosses from public land

Halting the Post Office from issuing religious cancellations

Ending 51 years years of illegal bible instruction in public schools

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."

Why is it concerned with what it calls "state/church entanglement?"

"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]."

[wagglebee]

Marbury v. Madison was a tool used by the SCOTUS to escape irrelevance. The way I read the Constitution, the executive branch upholds laws that Congress enacts. Nowhere do I see the mandate for the Supreme Court to determine what is and isn't Constitutional, logic would dictate this is an executive task.

[Mr. Silverback]

Funny how the atheists always forget stuff like Jefferson funding missionaries out of the U.S. Treasury...

[risk]

There is nothing in the site you liked to that supports [the] contention [that "I smell a rat" was anything but anti-federalist].

I think you're right. Thanks for pointing that out.

[EdReform]

The Separation of Church and State Myth:Why God MUST Be Acknowledged.

[jwalsh07]

Section 1 of the fourteenth amendment is the "incorporation clause."

Not to my knowledge. Section 1 is the Due Process Clause and is the mechanism that courts have used to "incorporate" certain of the Bill of Rights, the second amendment notably not one that has benefitted from the Doctrine of Incorporation. Though by no means the only one that hasn't been incorporated.

[Mr. Silverback]

Where in the world would you go?

[cyborg]

Success? Do I have a little neice or nephew on the way? Nosey- I mean concerned freeper wants to know ;-)

[cyborg]

LOL!!! (philippines I think)

[Mr. Silverback]

Yes, it's much better to just let these "at-risk" youth committ felonies and go to prison. Better to have them rape, rob and kill then to believe in God and themselves.

Here's the fun part though: Johnny doesn't get mentored because the atheists win their suit, and he committs a crime and gets sent to prison. He turns 18 and has a chance to participate in a Prison Fellowship program, which the atheists can't screw with because the participants are willing adults exercising their freedom of religion. He gets the help he needs and becomes a solid citizen.

What atheists fail to understand is that God will not be mocked, and his Word will not be hindered. They might as well try to dam Niagara Falls with a business card.

[Mr. Silverback]

See post 78.

[jwalsh07]

[jwalsh07]

So what do you want me to tell you?

Thanks for the Constitutional Law lesson?

[wagglebee]

Article III, Section 2. The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;—to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;—to all Cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction;—to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;—to Controversies between two or more States;-between a State and Citizens of another State;—between Citizens of different States;—between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.

Nowhere does this imply that the SCOTUS decides what is Constitutional, John Marshall claimed the right, nobody disagreed and the idea stuck.

[risk]

And, it looks like we agree on the reason that the second amendment is never enforced.

What? It's not enforced because our government has been teetering on the verge of totalitarianism since the 1934 National Firearms act.

[Mr. Silverback]

Never mind, I found the answer further down in the thread.

[Mr. Silverback]

Also, check out Washington's Thanksgiving Day proclamation sometime. It's God-a-rific.