OP-ED; UNFAIR RELIGIOUS BENEFITS OVER SECULARISM

The Wall that Doesn’t Exist

Thomas Jefferson once said that the Constitution “[built] a wall of separation between church and state.” Policies cited in a feature in the October 8, 2006 New York Times lead me to believe otherwise.

Religious organizations—Christian, Jewish, Muslim, etc—get benefits, tax breaks and exceptions that no other group is entitled to get. These benefits are shifting the playing field away from free enterprise, putting secular nonaffiliated organizations out of business, as well as allowing the religious institutions to break the law.

The feature highlights the example of day care centers in Alabama. One center, run by Ethel White in Auburn, is always under the threat of inspection by state and federal authorities. In her center, “There must be continuing training for the staff…All cabinets must have safety locks. Medications for the children must be kept under lock and key, and refrigerated.” These requirements seem reasonable, considering that the safety and welfare of children is at stake.

Especially since Alabama had to tighten its licensing requirements after 12 children died in licensed and unlicensed centers.

However, a day care center run by the Rev. Ray Fuson in the Harvest Temple Church of God in Montgomery is not subject to such requirements. It does not need a license from the state to operate. His center can function as it pleases, when it pleases, how it pleases, with no such threat of inspection, ever.

This specific example is isolated only to Alabama, but it is a microcosm of a much larger problem. Religious organizations are encroaching further into society every day—“from day care centers to funeral homes, from ice cream parlors to fitness clubs, from bookstores to broadcasters”—and they are allowed to operate outside the laws that govern the free market, putting out legitimate businesses and destroying nonprofits.

In addition to not being subject to safety requirements, faith based institutions are not held to civil rights requirements when hiring workers: they may discriminate on race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality and age, if they so desire. The faith-based institutions are immune from all litigation in regards to their hiring practices.

Faith Based institutions do not have to report annual receipts and donations to the IRS, as non-religious centers must do. They have been given healthy tax rebates, despite the fact that the institutions pay no federal taxes to begin with. Further, all states have long exempted religious houses of worship from property taxes.

According to the New York Times article, since 1989, over “200 special arrangements, protections or exemptions for religious groups or their adherents were tucked into Congressional legislation, covering topics ranging from pensions to immigration to land use.” Court decisions from all districts— federal, state and local—all reflect the same pattern as well.

This “religious affirmative action,” coined by John Witte Jr., director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at the Emory University law school, directly contradicts the free exercise and freedom from establishment clauses of the First Amendment concerning religion. It goes against the spirit of the amendment itself. The founders wanted to allow religious enterprise, but not at the sacrifice of secular society and business.

Yet the Christian Right, many conservative lawmakers and others say that there is currently a “war on religion.” One must wonder exactly from what world these deluded thoughts come.