LA TIMES slaps Obama Administration on Faith-based Discrimination

The Los Angeles Times editorial page took the Obama administration to task today for its delay in deciding whether to apply non-discrimination provisions to religious organizations which take federal funds as part of his government's version of the faith-based initiative begun in the Bush administration.

What's missing is a clear statement that faith-based services that accept federal money may not discriminate in hiring on the basis of religion. Rather than flatly prohibiting such discrimination, Obama's initiative establishes an advisory council, which will refer legal questions about "programs and practices" to the attorney general. That seems to contemplate a case-by-case approach that could confuse some applicants for federal aid and encourage others to hire only church members and take their chances.

A ban on discrimination in hiring is admittedly inconsistent with one rationale for faith-based programs: that a pervasively religious program might be especially potent in transforming the lives of addicts, prison inmates or teenagers involved in risky sexual relationships. Indeed, the message that sobriety or persevering in a troubled marriage pleases God might well be more effective than a secular appeal for a change in behavior. But government underwriting of such activities violates the 1st Amendment's prohibition of an "establishment" of religion. That may be why Bush's original executive order described aid to faith-based charities as a way to "level the playing field" between religious and nonreligious charities.

Obama did appoint an openly gay, Black man to the advisory council, Fred Davie (partner of Michael Adams, executive director of SAGE, Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders.)

This is not enough to quiet concerns by the members of the Times op-ed page as well as LGBT activists who see the failure to enforce non-discrimination provisions as signs of "squishiness" of the Obama administration on the question even before a sure-to-be-messy legislative fight for a trans-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act.