Atheists sue to stop Christian mentoring

LAW OF THE LAND
Atheists sue to stop
Christian mentoring
'Our Constitution was very purposefully written to be a godless document'
Posted: November 27, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern



© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com The Wisconsin-based atheist group Freedom From Religion Foundation is suing to cut off federal funding to a Christian child-mentoring program that helps troubled kids.

Last year, the federal government awarded a $225,000 contract, part of $9 million awarded to 52 Arizona groups, to Phoenix-based MentorKids USA, according to the Madison, Wisc.-based Capital Times.



The lawsuit, presided over by U.S. Judge John Shabaz, is demanding a summary judgment that federal funding of the program cease until the government "has a demonstrated plan in place to comply with its constitutional obligations," reports the Wisconsin paper.

Citing the First Amendment, the atheist foundation said, "Mentoring to convert is not a suitable social service to be provided by the government," said the report.

MentorKids USA was launched in 1997 by Orville Krieger, in partnership with Charles Colson's Prison Fellowship, "to address the needs of at-risk youth in the Phoenix, Arizona, metropolitan area by matching caring Christian adults with youth ages 8-17 who showed warning signs of becoming criminal offenders," says the Christian organization's website.

Originally called Phoenix MatchPoint, the group changed its name last January to MentorKids USA. It has a long and successful track record in mentoring children in trouble with the law, who have dysfunctional family backgrounds, have been physically or sexually abused or who are involved with drug or alcohol abuse. To date, MentorKids USA has helped over 500 kids.

In the program, mentors commit time each week to be a friend and role model for an at-risk youth. The mentors "offer concrete expressions of unconditional love and support to the mentee," says the group's website, "and the two participate in activities designed to build friendship, trust, and constructive values."

Some of the Freedom From Religion Foundation's "legal accomplishments," according to its website, include:

• Winning the first federal lawsuit challenging direct funding by the government of a faith-based agency
  
• Overturning a state Good Friday holiday
  
• Winning a lawsuit barring direct taxpayer subsidy of religious schools
  
• Removing Ten Commandments monuments and crosses from public land
  
• Halting the Post Office from issuing religious cancellations
  
• Ending 51 years years of illegal bible instruction in public schools

According to its website, the non-profit foundation was incorporated in Wisconsin in 1978 and is "a national membership association of freethinkers: atheists, agnostics and skeptics of any pedigree."

Why is it concerned with what it calls "state/church entanglement?"

"First Amendment violations are accelerating," says the group's website. "The religious right is campaigning to raid the public till and advance religion at taxpayer expense, attacking our secular public schools, the rights of nonbelievers, and the Establishment Clause.

"The Foundation recognizes that the United States was first among nations to adopt a secular Constitution. The founders who wrote the U.S. Constitution wanted citizens to be free to support the church of their choice, or no religion at all. Our Constitution was very purposefully written to be a godless document, whose only references to religion are exclusionary.

"It is vital to buttress the Jeffersonian 'wall of separation between church and state' which has served our nation so well."

But William Rehnquist, current chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, says this view put forth by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the ACLU and similar groups is a fiction and mockery of the true meaning of the First Amendment.

The Establishment Clause, explained Rehnquist in a 1985 opinion, "forbade establishment of a national religion, and forbade preference among religious sects or denominations. â?¦ The Establishment Clause did not require government neutrality between religion and irreligion nor did it prohibit the Federal Government from providing nondiscriminatory aid to religion. There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the Framers intended to build the 'wall of separation' [between church and state]."

Howdy Y'all,

Judge Rehnquist states:The Establishment Clause, explained Rehnquist in a 1985 opinion, "forbade establishment of a national religion, and forbade preference among religious sects or denominations. â?¦ The Establishment Clause did not require government neutrality between religion and irreligion nor did it prohibit the Federal Government from providing nondiscriminatory aid to religion. There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the Framers intended to build the 'wall of separation' [between church and state]."

As usual,the secular Left,attacks folks of Faith,with our children as the victims of their hate-filled,intolerant secular humanism. Will the Left ever stop attacking and exploiting our children ? From murdering them in the womb-to exploiting them sexually for the sake of the homosexual agenda-their attacks are relentless.

View homosexual film, or school faces lawsuit, ACLU tells (school) district
WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Sunday, November 28, 2004


Sunday, November 28, 2004


LAW OF THE LAND
View homosexual film,
or school faces lawsuit
ACLU tells district: Force students
to watch 'tolerance training' video
Posted: November 28, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern



© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

If administrators of Kentucky's Boyd County school district can't find a way to force all students to attend sexual orientation and gender identity "tolerance training," the American Civil Liberties Union is threatening to take them to court â?? again.

Ten months ago, the district settled a lawsuit with the ACLU over the right of a student group, the Gay-Straight Alliance, to meet on campus. The year-long litigation strained relations in the conservative northeast portion of the state. In addition to allowing the group to meet on campus after school, district officials agreed that all students, staff and teachers would be required to receive "tolerance training."

The agreement stipulated all would attend "mandatory anti-harassment workshops," including the viewing of an hour-long "training" video covering sexual orientation and gender identity issues for middle and high school students.

But ten months on, one-third of Boyd County students have failed to see the video, and that has the ACLU threatening court action.



"It sounds like the training can't possibly be done," James Esseks, litigation director for the ACLU's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, tells the Louisville Courier-Journal.

District figures show 105 of 730 middle school students opted out of the training video and 145 of 971 high school students did likewise. On the day scheduled for training, 324 students didn't show up for school.

The current legal snag arises from the fact the original consent decree had no provision for parents exempting their children.

"The schools have great latitude in what they want to teach, including what's in training programs, and the training is now part of the school curriculum," Esseks says. "Parents don't get to say I don't want you to teach evolution or this, that or whatever else. If parents don't like it they can homeschool, they can go to a private school, they can go to a religious school."

"Where are the parental rights in this whole thing?" asks Rev. Tim York, president of the Boyd County Ministerial Alliance and head of Defenders Voice, a community group formed to contest the decree.

According to the group's website, Defenders Voice "incorporated due to the need for protection of both the physical and mental health of our students and citizens." Its members place blame for their current distress squarely on the ACLU:

"We have seen an onslaught of aggressive homosexual activism sweep across our country. In many cases, these activists are supported by the ACLU in their attempts. ... Defenders Voice believes that an organization like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) should not be allowed to tell parents what their children must learn."

The Alliance Defense Fund, a religious-liberties public-interest legal group, has signed on to help Defenders Voice, pledging to sue the school district unless it adopts an opt-out policy for parents this week. Alliance was formed in 1993 with the guidance of several well-known Christian conservatives, including the late Dr. Bill Bright, the late Larry Burkett, Dr. James Dobson, Dr. D. James Kennedy, and the late Marlin Maddoux.

Joe Platt, a Cincinnati attorney representing Alliance, says mandatory training on tolerance for homosexuals violates the right of conscience of parents and students who believe such behavior immoral.

But school district attorney, Winter Huff, insists to the Courier-Journal the decree does not violate parental rights: "Students certainly have the right to believe in what they want to believe, but they don't have the right to act out in inappropriate ways. The point is you don't treat people disrespectfully, you don't pick on people, you don't bully them, you don't make them afraid to come to school."

Meanwhile, only one of the seven plaintiffs in the 2003 lawsuit still remain in school. Six have graduated, and the teacher-adviser for the Gay-Straight Alliance club asked to transfer to another campus.

The ACLU's Esseks is now questioning whether the mandatory video meets the decree's required hour of anti-harassment training. Like one-third of the students in Boyd County schools, he has yet to view it.

The Godless shall have their day

Deuteronomy 32:35
Romans 12:19

We may stand for justice and fight the good cause, but in the end Christians know God will bring the judgement, and we never need to worry because the evil that seeks to destroy in the end will fail, and for that we can have peace and not worry.

Romans 12:9-23
Psalms 47

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Das

We may stand for justice and fight the good cause, but in the end Christians know God will bring the judgement, and we never need to worry because the evil that seeks to destroy in the end will fail, and for that we can have peace and not worry.

Romans 12:9-23
Psalms 47

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How can this be from Psalms when Christians didn't even exist when the psalms were written?

By the way, Torog knows I'm no republican, and I'm not religious at all, yet I still believe the ACLU is the work of the Devil. They are trying to establish a Dictatorship of the Politically Correct, which in the end will be worse than Hitler's Germany. IMHO, of course :D

Thanks for that Torog.

How can this be from Psalms when Christians didn't even exist when the psalms were written?
Reply With Quote

I think the hads split to sections of psals old testimate and new.

torog, for what reason do u think government funds should be payed to a christian charity. Don't u think that is unfair that the government sides with a certain religion? and won't u agree that that in some ways injures other's religious freedom. It basically says "christians, u got the big guys support." And don't argue it doesn't say that, cause in the crudest way to put it does. I see no reason why federal money should be diverted to a religiously affiliated program. and the aid is discriminate, because I don't see a shinto affiliated charity being given money by the government.

what do u have against homosexuals? has the fact that someone is homosexual affected u in anyway? Have a group of homosexuals gone to ur house and committed a hate crime because u are heterosexual? Do u also hate black people torog? Lets see u have done a great job of converting me to christianity. And since u obviously follow exactly what Jesus says I now know that a good christian hates those that is different from he or she, and likes to bother the hell out of anyone that isn't a christian. so thanks for helping me decide religion man. Good luck with the crusades man.

"if god was alive he would hate you any way" -mm

sums it up bout right to meee
PeAs!:)