Monday, December 11, 2006

Got Christians?

Christianists force conversion on the powerless using your tax dollars

http://www.correntewire.com/christianists_force_conversion_on_the_powerless_using_your_tax_dollars

"The program — which grew from a project started in 1997 at a Texas prison with the support of George W. Bush, who was governor at the time — says on its Web site that it seeks 'to ‘cure’ prisoners by identifying sin as the root of their problems' and showing inmates 'how God can heal them permanently, if they turn from their sinful past.' Actually, the program reaches farther back into the dank recesses of Republican theocracy-building than Bush; the corporation (InnerChange, 2006 revenues $56 million) that runs the Iowa program is Prison Ministries, run by Nixon hatchetman and Watergate felon Chuck Colson. The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past."
Lambert on CorrentWire.com (blog)

"For Robert W. Pratt, chief judge of the federal courts in the Southern District of Iowa, this all added up to an unconstitutional use of taxpayer money for religious indoctrination, as he ruled in June in a lawsuit challenging the arrangement. Judge Pratt noted that the born-again [SIC] Christian staff was the sole judge of an inmate’s spiritual transformation. If an inmate did not join in the religious activities that were part of his 'treatment,' the staff could write up disciplinary reports, generating demerits the inmate’s parole board might see. Or they could expel the inmate."
Lambert on CorrentWire.com (blog)

"Jay Hein, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, said the Iowa decision was unfair to the ministry and reflects an 'overreaching' at odds with legal developments that increasingly 'show favor to religion in the public square.' Yeah, what’s wrong with using public money to finance conversions to Christianity? My goodness, I can’t imagine! Yet another Bush program that should not be compromised with, in some Moderate, Centrist, Bipartisan way, but repudiated and eradicated. Not only does this crap finance our enemies, it finances enemies of the constitutions, and it’s evil to use your power over others to force your beliefs on them."
Lambert on CorrentWire.com (blog)

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