Faith-Based Procrastination: Religious Job Bias in Taxpayer-Funded Program

Faith-Based Procrastination: Religious Job Bias in Taxpayer-Funded Program

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No American should be denied a taxpayer-funded job because of what he or she believes about religion. Yet that’s exactly what is happening today under the “faith-based” initiative. It’s wrong, and it time for it to stop.

The idea of awarding tax aid to religious groups to run various secular programs for people in need is not new. As a strict advocate of separation of church and state, I’m not a huge fan of the idea, but courts have permitted such public aid under certain conditions. What is new is the insistence that religious groups can take tax aid and still engage in overt discrimination on religious grounds when hiring staff. This concept was aggressively promoted by the administration of President George W. Bush. It was a bad idea then, and it hasn’t improved with age.