Posted on 11/27/2004 2:50:54 PM PST by 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]."
The ACLU gives skepticism a bad name. Some of our Founding Fathers were skeptics, yet they were able to make lasting law with their Puritan counterparts during the Constitutional Convention. I say America needs both today just as it did then. The common enemy is the extremist who wants to use law to force his opinions on others -- from either perspective.
Ping
Thanks. Ugh!
No such clause exists and the second amendment has never been incorporated. Care to guess why?
Does atheist mentoring have a better effect on children? I wonder!
The acceleration is dramatic. The Godless left is freaking out, Annie, and they've really kicked in the afterburners since the election, for the first time expressing open disgust and contempt for Christians. Of course, none of these groups have a problem with Islam or Buddhism or Witches or any other religion; it's all about Christianity. Puzzling and hypocritical on its face, but perfectly logical when you look deeper. You just have to figure out who's REALLY at the core of these outfits, and then it's completely understandable that only Christ scares him.
MM
With respect to a state religion you are correct. However, the "equal protection clause" does not make the 10th Amendment irrelevant. The left wants to make everything a matter for the federal courts, when clearly most of these issues are state issues, and the overwhelming majority are legislative rather than judicial issues.
And what does that say about society at the time? I have a hard time imagining any atheist or other non-Christian saying "in the year of our Lord". AD I can see, because A and D are just two letters of the alphabet. But I can't imagine anyone uttering that full phrase without understanding the import of it. Maybe it's just me.
Yep.
Merry
Christmas!
I've heard both Clintons, Kerry, Dean, Gore and all of the other leftists refer to God many times and no, I don't think the magnitude of our Lord means anything to them.
I don't remember them b!tching about Scientology running anti-drug programs under government contract.
Just the first example I can pull off the top of my head. I'm sure their are others.
You misunderstand. If the mentors were atheists, the FFRF would swoon. They only share your dim view of federal social funding in cases where it might make a kid think religious people are reasonable.
See post 78, Doc.
The second statement follows from the first only if you could demonstrate that establishing an official religion actually violates someone's rights.
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