Republicans Vote Specifically in Favor of Government-Funded Religious Discrimination

Today, 220 members of the House of Representatives (96% of them Republicans) voted to approve H.R. 27, a bill that makes it legal for religiously proselytizing organizations to take taxpayer money to support proselytizing activities, and to use those taxpayer funds to engage in hiring discrimination. H.R. 27 makes it legal, for the first time in American history, for government-funded programs to refuse to hire anyone who refuses to join a list of approved religions.

If the Senate follows the House’s lead and passes this bill into law,

• the Catholic Church will be able to take federal government money to create missionary programs, and then refuse to employ anyone who refuses to convert to Catholicism.
• a Southern Baptist church could set up a government-funded program in a Muslim neighborhood, then refuse to hire local workers until they agree to be baptised and renounce Islam.

• Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University would be allowed to set up a “community service” industry, using taxpayers’ money to hire only conservative Christians, refusing employment to Unitarians, liberal Catholics, or secular Americans for the sole reason that these otherwise qualified people would not pledge allegiance to the religious teachings of Jerry Falwell.
• a Mormon charity group could use government funds to set up a soup-kitchen requiring you to read Mormon religious tracts to get government-funded food, and then refuse to hire people to dole out the government-funded food to the homeless unless those people join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints first.
• a religious cult could use this legal provision to distribute government-funded benefits to citizens and require administrative personnel to join their cult in order to keep collecting their government-funded salary.

Not only does this bill violate the constitution provision against the government establishment of religion, it also violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection under the law. Hum a few bars with me, if you will…

Have a religion the Bush administration favors? Congratulations! You get to establish jobs within your religious organization paid for in full by the U.S. Government! You also get to be sure that members of YOUR religion, and ONLY your religion, get government-paid jobs.

Have a religion that the Bush administration doesn’t favor? You don’t get the privilege of hiring religious insiders on the government dole.

Have no religion whatsoever? (Yes, Virginia. Although no politician dares to mention it in public, there are more nonreligious people in the United States than Jews and Muslims put together.) Sorry! You don’t get to discriminate against religious people in hiring. That would be illegal and immoral. You see, it’s only a good thing when religious zealots approved by the Bush administration try it.

The Republicans got extra tricksy on this measure, hiding it inside a bill that did many other things as well and hoping that nobody would notice. The Republicans wanted to be able to say that they were only voting on a jobs bill. But everybody knew that this bill was primarily about putting religions on the dole and legalizing religious preferences in hiring. We can be sure of this because Representative Robert Scott of Virginia did a brave and clever thing, offering an amendment to H.R. 27 that would have only removed the specific language permitting government-funded religious discrimination. Therefore, a “YES” vote on Scott’s amendment would be a vote for the separation of church and state. A “NO” vote would be a vote for government-funded religious discrimination. Then Representative Scott demanded that every member’s vote on the Amendment be recorded for posterity in a roll-call.

Posterity, nothing. We need to display the names of those who voted “NO” on Rep. Scott’s amendment prominently, publicly, and right away. And we need to call this collection of names by its right name:

Is your representative to be found in this Hall of Shame? Well, don’t just sit there with your impotent outrage. Do something! Contact your representative and give them fifty pieces of your mind. Let them know that you know what they’ve done. Then pass word on to five friends. Don’t let this unconstitutional act of hubris pass without a word of dissent on your part. We can’t let this unAmerican act be shoved down our throats without a peep. Well, actually, the sad thing is that we can. But we mustn’t.