Posted on 11/28/2004 12:24:32 AM PST by JohnHuang2
Saturday, November 27, 2004
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:
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]."
im waiting for this headline
"Christians counter-sue Atheists for being stupid"
I can hope right?
heh, heh! I like that.
btw, a Thank You from all of us for serving our country. Stay safe and God bless.
with our activist judges it wouldnt work, but I have seen crazier things right?
no problem...
im just a contractor...
it really isnt that horrible over here....
You're a hero in my book.
well thank you....
its no biggie though....just doing my job...
No, THANK YOU, my friend. And all who serve there with you.
Christians are guilty of a hate crime. Atheists on the other hand are persecuted and misunderstood people. That's the way the Left views the culture war in this country.
Want to get started ridding the nation of these
evil communists?
Just joined this organization - won't you join me?
http://www.stoptheaclu.org/
They hate God, they hate you, and they will never stop.
Charles Colson is a perfect example of how a felon can be rehabilitated using Christianity as a tool.
This is increasingly silly -- If someone wants to be an Athiest/be gay, they are free to do so. But NO, they want to force it on others. Sheesh. In the 50s, there were no 'gay' p[arades, but if some folks wanted to live that life, they could do so away from the public eye.
The service offered is mentoring of a child by an adult.
If there are other mentoring programs that are permissible, then to deny this mentoring program, because one doesn't approve of the religion of the participants, is to discriminate on the basis of religion. It is to say that religious Americans are not as equal as non-religious americans.
Atheism is an open ended philosophy.
It sounds like fun to take down the railings until you understand that it then becomes easier for people like Joe Stalin to starve whole regions of his nation to death.
Now there's a guy that could have used a little more mentoring of the right kind.
In related news, FFRF pressures Congress to pass 12-Strikes and You're Out Rule for prior felons!
I grew up with an atheist (my mother). Talk about being repressive -- we never said grace around the Thanksgiving table, no one was allowed to say anything about belief in God or you would be jumped.
Atheists want to go around repressing everyone else to their dry-as-dust, toad in the mud view of life. Thanks but no thanks.
post 15, good points.
I thought you were mil too, still feel the same regardless.
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