[NYTr] State-Church: Ambivalent Edit'l on FFRF's N.Dakota Lawsuit

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Freedom From Religion Foundation - Nov 12, 2007
http://www.ffrf.org


The "Bismarck Tribune" ran an ambivalent editorial, "Church role in
youth therapy is challenged" (Nov. 11, 2007), about the Freedom From
Religion Foundation's federal challenge of government sponsorship of a
church-run juvenile detention system in North Dakota. The editorial
does concede: "if it coerces minors into faith who are not voluntary
participants, it's in the wrong." 

Bismarck Tribune - Nov 11, 2007
http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2007/11/11/news/opinion/editorials/142506.txt

Church role in youth therapy is challenged

The name of the organization tells it plainly: Freedom From Religion
Foundation. The Wisconsin-based group wants a U.S. district court to
rule against any public funding of the Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch. The
legal complaint further demands that public agencies not refer troubled
young people to the program as long as religion plays any part in the
treatment.

To excise the spiritual component might be intolerable to the groups
that run the program as an expression of their Christian religious
faith. They are units of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America and
the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

The foundation of "freethinkers" - read atheists and agnostics - might
have a good case, but courts are decidedly erratic on church-state
matters. It's alleged that "children are committed to the Dakota Boys
and Girls Ranch, without their consent, by county social service
agencies or the (state)Department of Juvenile Services and/or the
(state) Department of Human Services, and all the children receive
religious inculcation, including those who are committed by public
agencies."

The atheist foundation might have its strongest argument on a
constitutional basis if it's true that "children are disciplined for
refusing to participate in the spiritual aspects of their therapeutic
treatment plan, including suspension of privileges; prolongation of
commitment (to the program). ... Refusal to participate in religious
activities is considered nonparticipation in a child's treatment plan."

It should be questioned whether the named plaintiffs, including five
individual North Dakota residents, have the best interests at heart of
youths who have emotional problems or have delinquency or substance
addictions. Perhaps, it's more a matter of the Freedom From Religion
Foundation's 33-year history of combatting, mainly in court, the role
of religion in public life. It's won some, lost some cases. One of its
signal losses was a challenge to the Bush administration's funding of
work done by faith-based organizations. The foundation lost Hein v.
Freedom From Religion Foundation in the Supreme Court.

The Boys and Girls Ranch asserts that no one getting treatment is
coerced into Christian faith activities, that provision is made for
residents to engage in non-Christian spiritual activities off premises.
It also contends that it keeps separate accounting of private funds
used for spiritual activities and the state money used for treatment.

The parties bringing the complaint don't attack the effectiveness of
the therapeutic program. That's smart, because the latest
recertification by the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation
Facilities is lavish with praise. The most bothersome aspect of the
lawsuit is that its goal is entirely negative, to get practices to
stop. The foundation proposes nothing positive in place of the way
Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch is run.

The legal case illustrates a deep division in American society that has
existed for more than two centuries.

People of equally good character can differ radically on whether a
freedom from religion philosophy that nearly deifies an
extra-constitutional concept, separation of church and state, can
coexist respectfully with a right to freedom of religion.

The ranch program does good things. But if it coerces minors into faith
who are not voluntary participants, it's in the wrong.