well, that's just great.

[sophiaserpentia]

Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans to expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and - in a move sure to cause controversy - support some ability to hire and fire based on faith.

from Obama Vows To Expand Bush's Faith-Based Programs

This comes on the heels of Obama's stated willingness to vote for a bill that contains an immunity provision for telecom companies who helped Bush eavesdrop illegally on the phone conversations of who-knows-how-many American citizens.

Comments

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

It's not just that proselytizing was allowed. There's the case, for example, of religious prison programs which encourage therapeutic methods with very little in the way of solid research demonstrating their effectiveness, not much in the way of results, and which have in numerous cases led to people being forced to accept fundamentalist Protestant views (a Catholic was forced, in one high profile case, to renounce his Catholicism).

These funds are distributed to groups who apply for them, and who are accepted by the bureaucracy. As the program has been carried out it's been a very blatant payola to Bush's right-wing Christian supporters. To eliminate the bias in the system would involve revamping not just the federal bureaucracy but the rapid ramping-up of programs on the religious left that have been shut out of the process. It's not going to become, instantaneously, on January 20th an unbiased program.