And today in Wisconsin, the state supreme court upheld a school choice law that allows the state to pay for children to attend religious schools.
The court says that program doesn't violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment "because it has a secular purpose [and] it will not have the primary effect of advancing religion ..."
What a crock of crap. If the justices of that court really cared about secular purposes, they'd limit the state funding to private secular schools and not include private religious schools.
For many, many people, religious schools are used for the express purpose of advancing religion. I knew many kids my age who were sent to the local Catholic school. Their parents admitted that it was for the purpose of having their children learn religion in addition to other subjects. It wasn't because the schools had better educational policies or better teachers than the public schools. It was religion all the way.
How many more ways are theists going to squeeze tax money out of the rest of us? Religious organizations are already tax exempt. Many churches around the country receive free services from their communities, such as garbage collection, snow plowing, and so on. These things and many more only serve to throw the burden of paying for the balance onto the shoulders of everyone else. Now add to this large list the state funded religious education of children. I don't like the idea of government paying to further indoctrinate young minds into the clutches of religion.
And the idea that a state supreme court could not see the obvious crack that this puts in the wall of separation between church and state just boggles my mind. How can such activities not be in violation of the establishment clause?
I urge all Wisconsin residents to write to their congressmen in protest of this travesty of justice. With any luck, this decision can be overturned before the madness spreads further.
