In the November 19-25 issue of Scene magazine, Kev…
November 22nd, 2003 | by Jeremy |In the November 19-25 issue of Scene magazine, Kevin Hoffman writes an article about the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction allegedly violating the often misinterpreted “separation of church and state” by using state tax dollars to help pay for a Promise Keepers rally to be broadcast to a state prison. I know, I know. How horrible.
And of course, once various liberal groups with words like “liberties” and “united” got wind of this, they quickly put down their weed, threw on some sandals, and jumped into their low-emissions vehicles to make sure that the guy in cell block six who beat his wife with a hammer wasn’t accidentally exposed to a message of family values, moral, ethical, and sexual purity, and the hope he has in Jesus Christ. Wouldn’t want that to happen! It might hurt a Muslim’s feelings!
I don’t understand that when a prison (possibly) spends a couple thousand dollars on getting a positive message to criminals, the ACLU comes skipping along saying how wrong it is to use taxpayer money to pay for a Christian-based message, but when my tax dollars are used to pay for abortions, pay for school systems that teach evolution as fact and love to talk about sex education but not abstinence, pay for the salaries of corrupt judges, and all the other stuff our government pays for because liberal special interest groups demand it, I’m just supposed to bend over and take it.
By the way, the article uses the line “Ohio wants to bring inmates to Jesus, the law be damned” in order to draw people into the story. But the warden who “demanded” that the inmates watch this Promise Keepers event is an atheist. He’s an atheist who says he made a mistake by demanding the inmates watch because he didn’t realize it was religious. So the story could end there and it would be less than a page. But Hoffman uses that as a springboard to go into a much longer story about money kinda sorta being used to bring a Promise Keepers message to prisoners. Clever. But without this little springboard, he couldn’t use that catchy line to bring in the readers. Nor could he use the headline “Captive Audience.” Again, a clever headline but it really has nothing to do with what the meat of the story is about.
Kevin, there’s many examples out there about poor government use of our tax dollars. Bringing a message about values to inmates isn’t one of them.