"I Believe" - In WHAT, Exactly?

Mustang Bobby at Bark Bark Woof Woof discusses the new "I Believe" license plate the Florida legislature has given a tentative go-ahead to issue. His piece covers the basic arguments about separation of church and state, and an effective dissection of the key sponsors' (including Hillsborough County's resident Inquisitress, Rhonda Storms) histories and perspectives, quite well.

I was struck by some other items.

This piece of idiocy shows just how gullible the Xtian community really is.

The Faith In Teaching website is defunct: only cached copies remain. Domain.com shows the domain name as "taken" but the site is down.

Regardless of the state of the site, even the original site was remarkably short on detail. Only two pages seem to be available, each of which essentially repeats the other, and all the links posted on the Website lead off the site to other entities such as state legislators' pages and dot-gov resources. Any 501c3 entity to list only a vague mission statement and a PO box mailing address, with no more information, specific target programmes, board members or electronic contact information, simply screams "scam." And without more detail, there are no indications whatever that the effort is anything more than a means of screaming "State XX is Christian" rather than a meaningful effort to assist religious education institutions.

The cached pages and the related news stories hint that FIT is open to supporting both Christian and Jewish organisations with the funds received. However, I for one cannot imagine any self-respecting Jew that would put a Christian emblem on his/her bumper just to get $25 to his/her preferred school. There is, in turn, no plate offered with any Hebrew symbols (menorah, Star of David, etc) which would be equivalently meaningful to that faith. This, too, shouts out that the movement is deliberately misleading in its intents as well as in its presentation. Further, there is a noticeable absence of accommmodation for other faiths, both in illustrated plate samples or in the language used on the saved copies of the Website, which makes the interfaith claims spouted by FIT sound even more false.

There are already plenty of incentives for private donations like this. Income tax incentives alone yield more benefit for philanthropy. Likewise, there are plenty of other meaningful symbols that can already be applied without requiring state involvement as this particular effort obviously intends. Insisting that such a step is needed to save Florida's religious schools is worthy of the loudest ridicule: if the schools and teaching programmes are failing, it isn't because there hasn't been a license plate to bring them cash - it's because their primary sources of funding (philanthropy and donations) have dried up. Anyone who wanted to give to a faith-based school would already be doing so without the plate, and those too poor to do so before the plate are unlikely to be able to afford the surcharge for the plate now.

And last there is that sticky Separation of Church and State issue to consider.

One doesn't need to be anything other than Christian to see this transparent attempt at proselytizing for proselytizing's sake for anything but what it is. And one doesn't need a license plate to declare one's faith.

I'm far less incensed that Florida would debate such a clearly sectarian programme than that the state - any state - would be so willing to be duped by such an obviously dishonest effort.

Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness...

The "Traditional Values" lobby has been making much of a forty year old line in federal appropriations language as if it were new. Amy Sullivan shreds their argument for Time.

The provision that has the Huckabee gang all atwitter would prevent the use of federal construction funds for college facilities used primarily for religious purposes. In other words, you can't take federal money and use it to build a chapel on your campus. It does not do...well, pretty much everything Senator Jim DeMint claimed it would:

"[It] would make sure students could never talk openly and honestly about their faith ... what this means is that students can't meet together in their dorms if that dorm has been repaired with federal money and have a prayer group or a Bible study. They can't get together in their student centers. They can't have a commencement service where a speaker talks about their personal faith... Classes on world religions and religious history, academic studies of religious texts could be banned"

Now, that's just ridiculous--and unabashedly disingenuous, to boot. Again, the provision would prevent the use of federal funds for the construction of religious facilities. That's been federal law for decades and has to be reiterated every time monies for school construction are approved.

"All atwitter" is particularly humourous given recent events.

I'm particularly amused as well that all the hoopla from these people is actually costing them support, including from the ranks of those who would probably be their core bloc:

Of course, while social conservatives have been crying wolf about this higher ed construction provision, they've largely ignored a provision in the House version of the bill (the Senate version largely stripped out school construction funding and the issue is at the crux of negotiations between the two chambers) that didn't include parochial and other nonpublic schools in the "green schools" initiative that allocates money for schools to modernize. What their protest has done is conflate the two issues for many congressional staffers, some of whom have hardened their opposition to allowing parochial schools to access the modernization funds. Way to go, Huckabee Gang.

Says one religious lobbyist advocating for an expansion of the green schools provision: "The Traditional Values crowd doesn't have the material interests of religious higher education institutions in mind. They're just trying to put points on the board. They're not interested in the green schools issue because it's not something you can put in a direct mail piece. There wasn't any language in the House bill that explicitly said parochial schools can't get this money. But the higher ed section had to clarify that you can't use this money to build a chapel. So they're taking that and running with it."

I can't tell if Huckabee, DeMint et al are making noise for noise's sake, or if they just don't know what they've been doing all these years.

The Party That Prays Together

... apparently doesn't always stay together.

NASHVILLE — In November, the Tennessee Republican Party won a historic victory: its first majority in the state House of Representatives since 1869. But on Monday morning, just as the legislative session was about to begin, the party voluntarily gave it up.

In the latest flourish of a twisty melodrama that has consumed the General Assembly for weeks, the party chairwoman stripped the speaker of the House, Kent Williams, of his Republican Party membership, citing “dishonor, deception and betrayal.” Because Mr. Williams represented the party’s one-vote edge in the House, Republicans no longer control the chamber.

I was wondering how to approach this item until I found this quote from one of William's peers:

“What’s kind of the big insult around here, he had prayer with these guys,” said Robin Smith, the Republican Party chairwoman.

According to this rationale, it's not merely bad enough that Williams didn't keep his campaign promises, he sinned by working with those atheistic librul Democrats. And he slighted his fellow Believers in the process. Bipartisanship, therefore, isn't merely date rape - it's a crime against The Party and against God.

I have little hope of finding much to like about the sausage-making that is state government. Williams' actions are hardly likeable whatever the outcome. But the Republican response - truly the acts of God's Own Party - highlight just how wise the Founders were in stipulating the separation of Church and State.