THE OTHER day I came across an extremely puzzling article in the newspaper. I was reading a Washington Post article on the faith-based charity bill that recently passed through the House of Representatives when a single sentence stopped me cold. I blinked a few times, reread it, looked something up in the dictionary and read it again. No matter how many times I looked at it, the sentence still didn't make sense. Here's the sentence: "Several GOP conservatives threatened to withdraw their support if the bill was modified to force religious groups to comply with state and local anti-discrimination laws" ("Faith Initiative Hits Snag In House," July 18).
The word I looked up in the dictionary was "discrimination." I was checking to see if it still meant what I thought it meant. Sure enough, discrimination is still the unfair treatment of a person or group on the basis of prejudice. In other words, discrimination is still a bad thing. So when, exactly, did it become something the government is willing to support?
The bill concerning faith-based charities seems well-intentioned. It proposes that the government channel more federal funds to religious groups that give aid to the poor and disadvantaged. If the measure becomes law, the government will encourage donations to religious charities through the tax system and allow religious charity groups to compete for government money. By aiming to give more aid to the poor and disadvantaged, the bill supports good ends. The means, however, may be anything but good. The form of the bill that passed the House would allow religious organizations to engage in discriminatory hiring practices while using federal funds.
As the situation stands, the charities would not be forced to comply with state or local nondiscrimination laws either. The bill would make it perfectly all right for religious charities using federal money to refuse to hire Jews - or a gay person - for secular positions within their organizations.
In essence, the bill allows discrimination to be federally funded. An amendment that would have made religious charities follow local and state nondiscrimination laws was blocked by the Republican party leadership.
Proponents of the bill say that it follows the precedent of a 1964 law that allows religious groups to make hiring decisions based on their beliefs. That law, however, applied only to religious organizations using private, not public funds. It did not give the government the go-ahead to use public money to fund groups using religious criteria in hiring.
Supporters of the bill, including President Bush, say the bill is, indeed, about discrimination - discrimination against religious groups. In a press statement, President Bush said the bill's passage was "a victory for progress and compassion" and that the House had acted to "end discrimination against churches, synagogues, and charities that provide social services."
Supporters of the initiative claim that asking religious organizations to comply with anti-discrimination laws would be unfair because it would be asking them to hire people who do not share the same faith.
To put it bluntly, that's just too darn bad. A tradeoff seems necessary here. If religious organizations want the government's help in procuring funds, they should be willing to make the concession of agreeing to comply with nondiscrimination laws. The government's acceptance of discrimination of any kind, even in the name of religious unity, opens the door to something dangerous. If discrimination for those purposes is OK, who's to say that other types of discrimination shouldn't get federal support, if there's a good enough reason behind them?
There never is a "good reason" for discrimination. Discrimination should not be tolerated in any form whatsoever, for any reason, and, in the areas where it does continue to exist, it should certainly not be funded by the government.
Bush's presidential campaign focused on the idea of compassionate conservatism. He spoke of summoning up "armies of compassion" to do good works for all Americans, and he thought he could do so by turning his faith-based initiative idea into reality. That reality cannot, however, be one in which federally supported armies of compassion can discriminate when deciding who joins their ranks. Compassion cannot truly exist where discrimination continues to be tolerated.
(Laura Sahramaa is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. She can be reached at lsahramaa@cavalierdaily.com.)
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