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The following article is from the Secular Humanist Bulletin, Volume 23, Number 2 (Summer 2007).
The Center for Inquiry’s Office of Public Policy in Washington, D.C., working in cooperation with other groups, achieved an important legislative victory recently by helping to defeat a highly objectionable amendment to a bill reauthorizing the Head Start program. The amendment in question would have allowed federally funded Head Start programs to discriminate on the basis of religion.
First, little background: as most people are aware, Head Start is an early childhood education program that has been in existence for about four decades. Many educators believe that the program is critical for assisting disadvantaged children in communities across the country. Since 1972, organizations that receive federal funding for their Head Start services have been prohibited from discriminating on the basis of religion when hiring or firing staff for government-funded positions. This common-sense provision has enjoyed wide, bipartisan support throughout most of Head Start’s history. The current antidiscrimination language was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, someone not noted for being antireligious.
Despite prior bipartisan support for nondiscriminatory employment practices, some religious Right organizations, such as the Association of Christian Schools International, recently have agitated for passage of an amendment that would allow faith-based Head Start providers to engage in religious discrimination. (In the great tradition of Orwellian doublespeak, they have misleadingly referred to their amendment as the Religious Freedom Amendment.) Without even a hint of being aware of the irony of their position, the proponents of the amendment contended that faith-based providers need to engage in discrimination to protect their “civil liberties.” Moreover, they threatened that, if faith-based providers could not engage in discrimination, they would not be able to provide educational services.
Of course, there is no civil right to accept federal dollars and engage in religious discrimination. The very suggestion is both outrageous and disturbing. In addition, by authorizing personnel decisions to be made on the basis of religion, Congress essentially would have been endorsing the view that the religious “credentials” of an educator are more important than her/his professional qualifications. Hiring and retaining the best-qualified individuals, in terms of their relevant skills, should be the goal of any government-funded program. Having highly skilled and experienced professionals is especially important in a program dealing with our children.
Fortunately, the House of Representatives rejected the proposed amendment. Toni Van Pelt, Government Affairs Director for the Center for Inquiry, spearheaded the organization’s efforts to defeat the amendment.
It is paradoxical that some organizations were pushing for the right to receive federal dollars to fund religious discrimination at the same time that the country was debating how to deal with the troubling situation in Iraq. That unfortunate nation is embroiled in a brutal civil war caused principally by deep religious divisions. America’s record of respect for religious minorities and nonbelievers has been far from perfect, but, because of our strong tradition of separating church and state, we have been spared some of the worst excesses of religious prejudice. U.S. religious fundamentalists, nonetheless, want both the privilege of receiving tax dollars and the right to tell preschoolers that their favorite teacher had to be fired because “God does not like him.”
Neither the Council for Secular Humanism nor the Center for Inquiry takes an official position on what social-welfare programs should be funded by the government. That is a subject for legitimate debate. (And some of our libertarian supporters may not want any social-welfare programs funded.) However, if we are to support programs such as Head Start with our tax dollars, it is absolutely essential that they not become vehicles for tax-supported religious indoctrination. Religious bigotry and intolerance should not be the first lessons we teach our children.
Ronald A. Lindsay is the Center For Inquiry’s Legal Director.
CFI SUMMIT
OCTOBER 24-27 2013
TACOMA, WASHINGTON
Joint Conference of the Council for Secular Humanism, Center for Inquiry, and Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
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