Rev. Barry W. Lynn: February 2009 Archives

Well, Jay, the Supreme Court got it partially right yesterday by conceding the obvious: that when a city accepts any monument from a private party and puts it up as a permanent display in a park, that represents "government speech." It concluded that the city controls the messages it wants to convey to the public. Similarly, it recognized that there remain constraints on government speech, including the principles of equal protection and the Establishment Clause. This part of the decision was why groups like the American Humanist Association hailed it.

So, the Supreme Court has accepted the case of Salazar v. Buono involving cross erected on public land.

Jay, in spite of your best efforts to create the Fairness Doctrine as a huge issue, you have failed.  The White House did not "break" any silence.  It just reiterated what President Obama had said when he was "candidate" Obama: I don't want to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine.  Are you now satisfied?  America wants to know!

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Jay, I know that my good friend Bill Press did get 2 United States Senators (that would be, out of 100) to say they'd consider a return of the Fairness Doctrine.  Some liberal commentators wish he hadn't even asked. However, I'm still trying to figure out what it is you fear would happen if it did come back?

Do you think that your show on Salem would have to be "balanced" by an hour every day featuring the Rev. Eugene Robinson (or worse, me)?  Do you think that Sean Hannity would have his lips sealed with candle wax for half of his time on Fox so that some Alan-Colmesian figure would speak in his place?  Nothing like this ever happened when the Fairness Doctrine was in place before.  Why would it now?

This is the same kind of tempest in a teapot that Senator James DeMint tried to use to defeat the "stimulus package" (as if he would have voted for it ever anyway) as a abridgment of the right of student groups to meet in college buildings.  There are enough real differences between people like us that we don't have to manufacture additional pseudo-crises.  By the way, the St. Petersburg Times newspaper recently examined DeMint's claims about and found them, in their words, "false".

Jay, you may be the only person in America who is shocked (yes, shocked) that President Obama is making good on campaign promises. During the campaign, Obama was open about his pro-choice views on abortion. He vowed to overturn the regressive (and frankly foolish) "Mexico City policy" and has done so. He said he would support the Freedom of Choice Act, and he does.

 

The one area where Obama has stepped away from his campaign promises is the faith-based initiative. Obama said he would end religious discrimination in these tax-funded programs, but now he is wavering, talking vaguely about a possible review by the Justice Department somewhere down the line. One would think you would be pleased, yet all you do is continue to complain. I'm beginning to think you don't like Obama strictly because he's not of your political persuasion and that you will never applaud a single thing he does.

 

As for the nuts and bolts of the faith-based initiative, we've been here before. You assert, "The Supreme Court has recognized that religious institutions have the constitutional right to define their own mission, set their own doctrine and set forth their own hiring criteria." As usual, you don't tell the whole story. Of course religious groups are free to determine their own policies with their own money. But public funding changes the moral and constitutional calculus - as it should.

 

You are aware of the numerous contracting firms that exist inside and outside of the Washington, D.C. Beltway. They execute contracts for federal agencies - Education, Labor, Health and Human Services, Defense and others. These firms are closely monitored by the feds to make sure they are getting the job done - and, since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt, they have not been permitted to discriminate in hiring. (I'm trying to imagine the uproar if one of these firms took $250 million to oversee a project for, say, the U.S. Education Department and then said, "Thanks for the money. By the way, we won't be hiring any people who belong to the Dutch Reformed Church because, well, we just don't like 'em.") Why should religious groups that accept government contracts expect to get their own sweet deal? Bottom line: If you don't want the government regulations and oversight, just don't take the money!

 

I've never been afraid to criticize a president with whom I am in accord on many other ideological matters: Obama is wrong, so far, on the faith-based initiative. He's messed this up big time, and if he doesn't reverse course soon, it will come back to haunt him. For some inexplicable reason, Obama seems determined to use the faith-based initiative to woo white evangelicals - 74 percent of whom did not vote for him - instead of reforming it to please the people who actually pulled a lever for him in November. I'll be the first to admit that I don't get it.

 

The good news is, more and more people are speaking out. Americans United and its allies haven't been shy in letting Obama know we're disappointed, and I was pleased to see this group of African-American activists lifting up their voices. 

You ask what Obama will do next. I don't know, but I have some thoughts on what I'd like to see him do next: respect the Constitution and civil rights/liberties by ending noxious forms of religious bias in taxpayer-funded faith-based programs.

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In spite of your best efforts, Jay, the United States Senate soundly rejected the argument that the stimulus package contained some terrible provision which would interfere with religious student groups meeting in buildings that might be funded by a few tax...