Omegavegeta wrote:
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So liberals don't oppose religious based charities receiving government funding?
I'm actually ok with it, provided they do it for all religions. This would have to include Scientology, Pastapharians, Discordians, Devil Worshipers etc.
If a devil worshiping group starts a charity and they get people to donate to their charity and they provide real charitable work, then to whatever degree the government provides assistance to said charities, they should receive them as well.
I suspect you are still looking at the religious nature of something when thinking about how the government should involve itself. I'm saying that true separation of church and state means that the government should not consider in any way the religious connections or actions of a person, group, or organization when considering how it's laws should apply.
Right now the criteria for some government grants for charities specifically exclude those which involve religious practice. That's what is wrong.
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They don't fight to remove religious symbols from parks maintained by government dollars?
Ok with that too, but you'd have to put an upside down cross next to the right-side up one, the Muslim crescent, as well as a plethora of other symbols to boot.
Why would you "have to"? That implies that someone (like the government) is forcing people to put crosses on this land. But that's not the case. If a group of Muslims made a park with their own funds, and put an Islamic symbol on said park, and then years later after much use the owners could no longer afford to maintain said park but the people of the city/state/whatever wanted the park to remain, and thus decided to have the parks service take over, then in that case, whatever symbols and/or monuments on said park should remain as well. They are part of the decision to publicly fund the park.
You're making it sound like the government chose to put religious symbols on these parks and thus impose some religion on everyone who visits. But that's not the case.
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Isn't this the very forum where nearly every poster in a thread agreed that it was a violation of a child's rights to be taught religion by his/her parents and that this was a good reason to support legislation to make it harder for parents to home shool their kids? Amazing! Maybe stop and look in the mirror on occasion?
Cite? I don't recall that one.
I'll see if I can find the thread. It was from a year or so ago and was about home schooling. Specifically a proposal in California to mandate that those who homes school must have the same state teaching credentials as public school teachers (any teachers really). At some point the thread shifted into discussing how this would make it more difficult for parents who wanted their kids to have a religious education, but who couldn't afford parochial school to educate their children themselves. The overwhelming response from most of the boards posters was that this was perfectly acceptable since it was wrong for parents to impose their own religious beliefs on their children anyway. Several posters made very impassioned arguments about how a child has a "right" to choose their own beliefs and it shouldn't be imposed upon them by parents. They argued that children shouldn't be exposed to *any* religion at all until they are 18, at which point they are adults and are free to choose to worship as they wish.
Which of course begs the question: If it's an issue of rights, then why restrict this just to poor parents? So if I have enough money to send my kid to a parochial school, no one has a problem with me "imposing" my beliefs on my child, but poor people shouldn't have this option? That makes no sense at all. The point being that the same argument for preventing home schooling parents from doing this would (and should) apply equally to organized parochial schools. It's not really about the credentials, it's about the objective of preventing children from being exposed to religion. It was an eye opening thread to me because it showed the degree to which the left would use government power to eliminate religion if they could. They settle for things like credentials for home schooling because it's something that they think they can get away with for now. But the ultimate objective is pretty clear: They want to eliminate religion. Period.
It's just a bit odd when I've seen these positions taken up so strongly on this very board to then have someone insist that the liberal political agenda isn't anti-religious at all. It clearly is. I just think that most liberals either lie about it, or are deluded somehow into not seeing the pattern of their own actions and political positions. Dunno. I just find it interesting from a psychological point of view. And I often wonder how many posters on this forum know they are lying when they deny the objectives of their own politic, and how many just never seem to put two and two together.