The Cover for the October 2008 edition of The Progressive offended many bleeding-heart Liberals to the point where some dropped their subscriptions to this marvelous monthly. The cover illustrates the Presidential contenders, John McCain and Barack Obama in an embracing kiss. The point being a commentary on Bipartisanship, among many others.
In this same Bipartisan Spirit, we see that now President Barack Obama clearly embraces the Faith-based initiatives of President (Boy George) Bush by extending and amending President Bush’s Executive Order 13199 of Jan 2001 with President Obama’s Amendment of Feb 2009. Barack’s amendment changes the name of the Office to the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships – a more liberal-sounding, politically correct name.
I’m waiting to hear from the new head of this Office, Joshua DuBois (also Barak’s campaign director of Religious Affairs) about the full details of the original Executive Order 13199 that Barak amends. I’ll engage in a continuous dialog with Joshua on many and varied issues as they emerge.
We are waiting to see what the original 13199 Order contains, but Barack’s amendment adds the following new sections:
1. Services paid for with Government Funds (collected from taxes, of course) are provided with “fundamental constitutional commitments guaranteeing the equal protection of the laws and the free exercise of religion and prohibiting laws respecting an establishment of religion.”
2. To “promote effective training for persons providing federally funded social services in faith-based and neighborhood organizations.”
3. Promote “better use of program evaluation and research” to assure that “organizations deliver services as specified in grant agreements, contracts, memoranda of understandings, and other arrangements.”
4. To “identify best practices and successful modes of delivering social services.”
5. And a few other things that “effect the delivery of services by such organizations and the needs of low-income and other underserved persons in communities at home and around the world.”
These are interesting amendments to Exec Order 13199. Moreover, we plan to follow the development of this Office – particularly the issues of entanglement of Church and State issues vis-à-vis tax monies, Program Evaluation, Best Practices and training for the delivery of services, and other stuff as it comes up.
As indicated on the AsssertiveAtheistMoments.com website – http://www.assertiveatheistmoments.com/FaithBase-1.html –
For the record, let it be known that Assertive Atheist Moments asserts that any and all tax-payer government funds used to support Faith Based efforts face a critical separation of Church and State entanglement situation….
With the above in mind, Assertive Atheist Moments is launching and helping to launch a number of national Faith Based initiatives based in the Humanist Faith of meliorism.
Stated clearly and succinctly, the Humanist Faith of meliorism is dedicated to the proposition that through Human efforts it is possible to ameliorate unjust and unfair situations across this great nation of ours – the US of A, the Leading Democracy of the Free World.
Assertive Atheist Moments is prepared to help launch the following Humanistic, Faith Based initiatives in the following the following three areas:
1. The Humanist Faith Based initiate that Gay Marriage will become the law of the land in all fifty states.
2. The Humanist Faith Based initiate that all state laws that interfere with a woman’s right to choose an abortion without being faced with undue burden, will be removed from the states that currently have such undue burdens in place.
3. The Humanist Faith Based initiative that everyone will be afforded the right to Die with Dignity. This includes establishing End of Life Centers, where a person could choose to live during their final two months of life, visited by family and friends, culminating in planned assisted suicide at the end of the two-month period of blissful and peaceful life within the End of Life Center.
Bob Allen
Tags: Add new tag, Faith-Based, Humanism, Humanist, Meliorism