Readers React: The faith-based slippery slope

To the editor: The problem is that nothing in President Obama’s executive order prohibiting anti-gay discrimination by federal contractors (including religious organizations) can bar a church from denying membership to gays. (“Religious rights and gay rights,” Editorial, Aug. 11)

Thus, any anti-gay church can limit job openings to its presumptively heterosexual members. Moreover, should any church member so employed later come out as gay, he or she, like an apostate, can be duly excommunicated — and then fired from a federally funded job for no longer being a member.

Churches inherently discriminate against those who don’t comport themselves with various tenets. They typically contrive to do so overtly and covertly, in every imaginable manner; policing such discrimination is all but impossible.

Obama, therefore, should close, and not simply modify, the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

It’s time to close this breach in the church-state wall.

Gloria Martel, Los Angeles

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To the editor: The faith-based initiative, a constitutionally suspect gift to the religious right, has enabled churches to do more than engage in invidious employment discrimination.

By making taxpayer money available to churches’ social service programs, this initiative served its originator, President George W. Bush, and other conservative politicians as a way to boost electoral support from religiously oriented voters. Small wonder that any attempt Obama makes to rein in abuses invites a political firestorm.

This is an example of how allowing religion into government makes for constitutional chaos.

Sandra Perez, Santa Maria