CPCs Hire Christians Only With Federal Funds? Thank Obama
At the newly-reconstituted American Independent News Network, Sofia Resnick has a story about how crisis pregnancy centers, which are well-known to be Christian-focused, promote a religious agenda and hire only other Christians. That’s something they can legally do if they are privately funded.
In some cases, Resnick reports, they do that with federal funds.
If you’ve got a problem with that, though, take it up with the Obama administration.
As I’ve reported on numerous occasions, as a candidate, Obama promised to change a Bush-era rule that permitted recipients of federal funds to discriminate in hiring staff based on religion (a practice known euphemistically to its promoters as “co-religionist hiring.”) After political pressure from evangelical leaders, Obama reneged on that promise, among others pertaining to reforming his Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
In the face of repeated requests from church-state separate advocates in the Coalition Against Religious Discrimination, Obama has refused to eliminate the hiring rule, opting instead for a vague “case-by-case” look at whether there has been discrimination in hiring or firing. What’s more, on the campaign trail he promised to strengthen constitutional protections in faith-based funding, but as the ACLU’s Dena Sher pointed out just last week, promised protocols to ensure that the constitutional rights of citizens served by taxpayer-funded faith-based organizations are protected remain stalled.